I’m fairly verbose. I have a lot of interests. I tend to get behind on my projects. Thus, when I started my first blog on blogger, I imposed a three sentence rule on my movie review posts. This turned out to be a very good idea. My reviews are fun to write and quick to read. And like every good rule, there are exceptions.*

There’s a lot of information out there about movies. It’s easy to view a trailer, or read a Wikipedia page, or find out what the plot is. But to quickly get a yay or nay? Well, that’s out there too, what with two thumbs up and the tomatometer. Ultimately, 3SMR is another way to get you quick information about a movie.

*Like when I use the asterisk to make some additional commentary, or a semicolon, or a fairly ungrammatical sentence that is probably more of a comma splice than a grammatically correct sentence.

Patricia Collins does! She’s got a post over on her About page, where she uses the first person, not the third.

Thanks for disagreeing so nicely. I mean, you could have said, “your reviews suxx, and your dumb,” or “Jesus Christ, you just recommended another boring movie where NOTHING EVER HAPPENS! What is wrong with you????!!!!???”

But I think it’s great that you don’t like any of the movies I recommend. It means we’re a perfect match, just in the opposite way. Don’t waste your time looking at my recommendations. Instead, go over to the page called Not My Cup of Tea. I’m guessing those are the movies for you. Enjoy!

That’s like asking a librarian to pick her favorite book or Jerry Seinfeld to pick his favorite car, or my cat to pick his favorite place for a nap.  There are too many good choices.

However, I come prepared to answer this question. My standard answer is that I have two favorite movies: Singing in the Rain and Almost Famous.

I love Singing in the Rain because it’s a nearly perfect classic musical (I always fast forward through most of the “Gotta Dance” sequence which is fine to watch once, but really drags after that) and it’s one of the first movies I watch with my mother, who also loves it. We probably watched it the first time on TV, probably even with commercials. It’s got really amazing dance numbers, it’s funny, it’s quotable, the costumes are fabulous and it’s a joy from start to finish. It’s everything a good movie can be.

I love Almost Famous because it’s Cameron Crowe–a writer and director who featured prominently in my movie-going experiences as a teenager and early adult–working at his prime. It’s about music, which was the big love of my adolescence, and it highlights changes in the music industry. It’s about a breaking down of gods and heroes, and finding something more real. And it’s also about being really uncool, which I happen to be. I also saw this movie at a particular moment in my life when I was changing and it imprinted on me.

There aren’t reviews of either of these movies on this site. I think I last watched Singing in the Rain in 2003 and Almost Famous maybe somewhere in the mid-aughts. I suspect some aspects of Almost Famous won’t play very well today.  But they still stand as my favorite movies. Both for what they are as movies, and what they have meant to me in my life.

I’ve got a very handy Contact page, where you can fill out a form.

You can also email me: threesentencemoviereviews [at] gmail [dot] com

I’m so glad to hear that!

I love finding movies made by women. I think it’s important to hear stories of all kinds, and right now it takes more effort than it should to see a movie directed or written by a woman. We can change that by seeking out films made by women and about women.

My first foray into this realm was the year I tracked my movies to see how many passed the Bechdel Test. I figured a lot of the movies I watched would pass, because I like such a variety of movies.

But NO! Halfway through the year I was disturbed how few of the movies I watched passed even the first test (has two women). The few movies with more than one woman did not tend to pass the second test (who talk to each other) and only a tiny fraction passed the third (about something besides a man). Dispirited, I stopped keeping track after a year.

Awareness is the first step. For those of you who want to go further, I suggest attempting #52moviesbywomen. This is a pledge to watch one movie a week either written or directed by a woman. I did it in 2016. I found a lot of new directors I didn’t know and caught up with movies made by directors I did know.

If you aren’t up for the full-on one-per-week challenge, cut it in half, or pledge to watch one per month. Or attend a women’s film festival.

I also suggest the website Women and Hollywood. There, you can read a lot of articles, and also sign up for a weekly email that delivers a list of movies created by women right to your inbox.