Free May 6-9: My eBook on the Best Movie Moms

Posted on May 6, 2016 at 5:00 am

In honor of Mother’s Day, my ebook 50 Must-See Movies: Mothers will be free on Amazon through Monday, May 6-9, 2016.

No relationship is more primal, more fraught, more influential, more worried over, more nourishing when good and more devastating when bad that our connection to our mothers. Mom inspires a lot of movies in every possible category, from comedy to romance to drama to crime to animation to horror, from the lowest-budget indie to the biggest-budget prestige film. A lot of women have been nominated for Oscars for playing mothers and just about every actress over age 20 has appeared as a mother in at least one movie. From beloved Marmee in “Little Women” and Mrs. Brown in “National Velvet” to mean moms in “Now Voyager” and “Mommie Dearest.” Oscar-winnng classics and neglected gems, based on real-life like Sally Fields in “Places in the Heart” or fantasy like Dumbo’s lullabye-singing elephant mom, these are all must-see movies.

Movie Mom on the Chris Brake Show!

Posted on March 30, 2016 at 2:49 pm

Thanks very much to Chris Brake for inviting me on his show! It was a lot of fun. Here’s what he said about our conversation.

Movie Mom talks Nora Ephron, the WFOD Hollywood Fantasy League, why Batman vs Superman and My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 are bad Fantasy League picks, Movie Mom’s 3 reasons Adam Carolla is wrong, why she’s the only critic in the world who liked the Bratz movie, which movies make money no matter what reviews say, good documentaries you should check out, Midnight Run, Good Girls Revolt, and some exclusive insider info about My Blue Heaven that no other reviewer will tell you. And later, Movie Mom accuses Adam Sandler of having contempt for the audience (with valid supporting evidence).

You can listen to it here.

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Movie Mom on Motley Fool Money — November 2015

Posted on November 21, 2015 at 12:16 pm

Thanks as always to my pals at Motley Fool Money for inviting me on the podcast. I always love it when I get to combine my interests in finance, investing, and movie!

Thanks to KOST for Including My Reviews on Their Great New Website!

Posted on September 21, 2015 at 12:00 pm

Thanks so much to Mark Wallengren and the gang at KOST for including my weekly radio spots about each week’s movie and DVD releases on their awesome new website! I love being on every week with you guys!

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Happy 20th Anniversary of the Movie Mom Website!

Posted on July 22, 2015 at 5:00 am

Twenty years ago this week, when there were only a few thousand websites and not one from a corporation or publication, I decided to publish movie reviews online from a parent’s point of view. In honor of that anniversary two of my ebooks will be free from today through Sunday. Check out 101 Must-See Movie Moments and 50 Must-See Movies: Weddings. I also have three hard copy versions of 101 Must-See Movie Moments to give away. Send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with 20 in the subject line and tell me your favorite movie. Don’t forget your address! (US addresses only) I’ll pick winners at random on July 26, 2015.
Enjoy!

In 1995, just about every site on the Web was put there by a college student or someone in the military or was part of a university’s in-house system for publishing notices of meetings and conferences and trading papers and data. I had been online since 1986, when it was just pre-Web bulletin boards and listservs. I was very interested in the technology, but I didn’t want to create a the typical “Here is a picture of my dog and my coffee pot and here are my ten favorite links” website. And I wanted to write movie reviews. So I decided to combine the two. I still remember that first URL: http://www.prodigy.com/rcpj55a/moviemom

It is hard to remember now how new and exotic and primitive the web was in those days. I did all my own code for the first four or five years, and was very proud of myself for figuring out how to post pictures of movie posters and embedded links. And I watched the Web grow up all around me. When I began, there was no Yahoo and no Google. AOL was Macs only. I had to use dial-up. There were no cable modems, either. My first site even pre-dates the Internet Archive and the Wayback application. It was via Prodigy.

Five years later, Yahoo asked me to become its film critic, around the time that I began reviewing movies on radio station across the country (thank you, Froggy in Fargo for getting me started) and seven years after that, I got a call from Beliefnet, where I am living happily ever after.

As I typed away on that little computer in the study off our bedroom, the desktop that had less power than I currently have in my iPhone, I could never have imagined where it would take me. I am blessed by this journey and by all of you who are kind enough to visit me here. On to the next 20!