Category: Movie Review

By Jimmy Don Ventura, Motion Picture and Automotive Correspondent, Stockton Telegram-Dispatch and monthly contributor to the CMC Blog. There are motion pictures in which automobiles are props. There are motion pictures in which automobiles are important to the plot. And then there are motion pictures in which James Garner drives a black 1958 Chevrolet Impala…

By Jimmy Don Ventura Movie Critic, Stockton Telegram-DispatchGuest Reviewer — CMC Blog I’ve often said that there are two completely different movies playing on the screen every time you walk into a theater. The first one is the movie the director intended you to watch. The second one is the movie car people can’t help…

By Jimmy Don Ventura Movie Critic, Stockton Telegram-DispatchGuest Reviewer — CMC Blog Now I know what some of y’all are thinking. “Jimmy Don, Goodfellas is one of the greatest gangster movies ever made.” Wrong. Goodfellas is one of the greatest automobile documentaries ever made that accidentally got overrun by murderers. I watched the whole thing…

By Jimmy Don Ventura Movie Critic, Stockton Telegram-DispatchGuest Reviewer — CMC Blog I usually don’t review mini-series. That’s mostly because I come from an era where if a television story lasted longer than three nights, somebody eventually got amnesia, possessed by the devil, or trapped in a grain silo during sweeps week. I’m a movie…

By Jimmy Don Ventura Movie Critic, Stockton Telegram-DispatchGuest Reviewer — CMC Blog There are movies about cars, and then there are movies where the cars are just trying to survive the people driving them. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off falls squarely into that second category, and I mean that with all the respect a man can…

By Jimmy Don Ventura Movie Critic, Stockton Telegram-DispatchGuest Reviewer — CMC Blog There are movies where cars are props.There are movies where cars are characters. And then there’s Death Proof, where the cars are both executioners and confession booths, rolling down the asphalt like they’ve got something to settle with God and the guardrail. Now…

By Jimmy Don Ventura Movie Critic, Stockton Telegram-DispatchGuest Reviewer — CMC Blog Every month the Captain pays me to moonlight away from the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch and gives me about two thousand words and a loose set of instructions that can best be summarized as, “Jimmy Don, talk about cars and try not to insult the…

By Jimmy Don Ventura Movie Critic, Stockton Telegram-DispatchGuest Reviewer — CMC Blog COLD OPEN: NO WARM-UP LAP REQUIRED I don’t ease into Goldfinger. I never have. You don’t tiptoe up to a movie like this. You open the door hard, let the hinges complain, and see who flinches. February needed a film with some weight…

By Jimmy Don Ventura Movie Critic, Stockton Telegram-DispatchGuest Reviewer — CMC Blog There are movies you watch on purpose.There are movies you catch halfway through because the remote fell behind the couch.And then there are movies that don’t so much begin as ambush you—grab you by the collar, shove you down a stairwell, and make…