We find that almost any well made movie has some element of importance that elucidates an aspect or issue that we deal with in our private thoughts, in our intimate relationships, in our work and social world, in our political and environmental interactions, in our spiritual connection and consciousness.

We hope that our reviews will promote the understanding of the films we share with you as well as improve the conscious process by which these films are made.

In our approach, we are not professorial or particularly analytical, nor absorbed in abstraction. Neither are we sarcastic or derogatory, nor do we go by "Gee! Wow! Everything loud and brash is cool". We take the tone of lovers of movies who have reflected on films and want to share with friends what we have found. You may be surprised at the variety of genres and content range we praise. We hope you will react by considering aspects or dimensions that you had not considered before.

Since our reviewing intent and style is intimate and personal, we want to share something of ourselves so that you may better appreciate our perspective.

Let’s get the nicknames out of the way first. We actually use these names in our common address. My pet name in our marriage and among friends is Cranky, not because I am a nag, though I have my moments, but because I keep things cranking. I provide the focus, goal orientation, and drive. I edit our reviews because Craig is dyslexic and erratic. I also design and manage our web site. In addition to my word minding and cranking Craig, I keep the books and watch the finances. In the alchemy of our love and relationship, Cranky is really a positive term that I accept with affection and pride.

I first peaked into the world in Sisak, Croatia (then Yugoslavia) in 1970. The icy grip of communism and state mind set permeated my culture and education.

I was raised in a small house by my mother and her mother. My Mama worked hard at two jobs to support us, but she always found time and resources to take me to classical music concerts and other cultural events. We spent part of every summer at coastal resorts. Grandma was a babushka peasant who tended the garden and the meal preparation. I am grateful for the love, care, and warmth my home provided. It was an emotional cradle that fended off some of the chill of our cultural machismo and collectivism.

I began studying English in third grade. Later, I took lessons in other languages. Although I excelled in all academic disciplines, early on, I started showing special affinity for writing. My quiet disposition kept me out of the spotlight at school, so my teachers were quite surprised when my essay won the first prize in the County’s contest for 8^th graders.

When I was 11 years old, Mama took me on a 5-day trip to New York City. I had never been in such a metropolis nor in a place were English is the predominant language. Although this was my mother’s second trip to the States, she still felt intimidated by the sheer size of the city and the constant police, fire, and ambulance sirens. I, however, made myself feel right at home. Nothing intimidated me, and the very first day, I impressed my mother by how well I knew my way around. When it was time to go home, I locked myself in the hotel restroom. I was not leaving. My poor mother paced back and forth in front of the door pleading with me. After one hour, I finally emerged. While the plane carried us away, I watched the city glitter in the night. I vowed that I would be back.

When I was 17, Transcendental Meditation was becoming popular in Croatia. Communism in my country was not as opposed to experimentation as it was in some places. TM brought me the ability to silence my mind and enter states of repose for a few moments each day. That practice has served me well as I have ventured forth in a life that has sometimes been fraught with intensity and challenge.

At MIU, I worked up to becoming a part-time food service assistant manager. I also majored in Literature and took as many film and screenwriting courses as were offered. My dedication to learning paid off, and I graduated Summa Cum Laude. My last official act at MIU was to serve as valedictorian speaker at our class commencement.

In 1995, I moved to Los Angeles hoping to work in the entertainment industry. However, fate had a different twist for me. My first job here entailed driving. The day before my job started, I bought a sturdy used Volvo (we call it the tank). Unfortunately, I had never experienced city driving. In Croatia, no one in my immediate family owned or knew how to drive a car. I got my driver’s license in Iowa, but I didn’t need a car there. After a couple of days of clogged, confusing LA streets and freeways, I quit my movie industry job in near hysterics.

I began working as a personal assistant to Annette Warren Smith. Annette is a singer, a voice teacher, and the wife of a renowned jazz pianist Paul Smith. Currently, I’m working as an editor and collaborator on Annette’s book. Through Annette, I met Twinkie.

The one thread that has run through my life experience is the impact of movies. As a teenager, I used to collect clippings on movie directors and bind them in books. My mother wondered how I could spend so much time "playing" and still manage the heavy school load. In college, I regularly made my friends wait in front of the movie theater while I looked at the poster and recorded the movie’s credits onto my hand-held tape recorder. I have notebooks full of magazine and newspaper advertisement posters, each with careful notes about my impressions and the emotional and often spiritual impact of the film.

My pet name (Twinkie) derives from an experience in first grade, which characterizes my perspective on life. Our class was about to begin auditions for a musical. We all began a cacophony of La-La-La-La-La. The teacher, who was out of sorts that day, became increasingly shrill in her demands that we stop. The class did, but I continued La-La-ing a few more bars. She lost it. I was admonished severely and sent to the coatroom behind a semi-divider at the back of the class. I could still hear, but being alone and out of sight was intended as banishment that would instill contrition and shame.

My teacher proceeded to forget that she had exiled me. I was behind the wall for more than one hour. Such intentional cruelty was not in our poor teacher’s heart or normal practice. She usually released us after at the most 10 minutes. Suddenly realizing that one of her precocious and sensitive little charges was probably crushed by her indifference, she rushed around the half-wall. Rather than finding me covered with tears, she recoiled holding back laughter when she saw me covered with crumbs and surrounded with plastic wrappers from all of the lunchboxes. I had eaten all the desserts. At the time, the predominant treat was the Hostess Twinkie, and so my wife and now my friends call me Twinkie.

Through a strange life fraught with many miscues, I have come to view the cinematic parable as a core message regarding our modern spiritual, cultural, interpersonal, and interior conundrums.

As a rebellious teenager, I was "saved" from the dissolution of the drug culture and a hippy-radical start by joining a personality cult based on the group psychology techniques of a charismatic marriage-family-child counselor hired by our community and school district to teach lifestyles free from chemical dependence. My siblings and 40 or so College and even some high school kids left with him to Hawaii and the grip of tribalistic exclusivity. Germane to my perspectives on movies, our diet of the imagination was carefully monitored with reading lists of approved literature, limited newspaper and magazine subscriptions, and almost no television or movies. I was sent to law school and became the attorney for the cult.

After nearly two decades, I ran away from the cult in body. Its grip held my psychology and spirit hostage for nearly a decade more. My first step out was into a very Catholic religious community that included a small legal team dedicated to defending the faith and faithful and in supporting and protecting the rights of those who publicly protested abortion. Even though I had emerged from the deeper hell of the cult, I was still a dogmatist. I did not go to the movies, but my emergence from media isolation began with an orgy of videos of all kinds.

When the law project failed to reach its financial and spiritual goal as an orthodox (ultra-conservative) Catholic force, I retreated to my birth land, Los Angeles. Before passing the bar and starting more misadventures as the legal defender of pro-life religious zealots here, I stumbled into a screenwriting course at a local State University.

The intense, energetic teacher inspired us with the dazzling revelation that at the core of movies, there is a sparse form of story telling that derives deeper meaning from action metaphors. My initial intention was to use this power to spread the truth of orthodox dogmatism.

My first real taste of Hollywood came through the Christian Film and Television Commission. I started working with the marketing team of the independent producer of a G rated family film that contained positive references to prayer and a squeaky clean dialog and action track. I was a bit shaky about the artistic merit and story power, but the blissful bath of dogmatic approval and the glory of doing good works in a wicked world inspired me to work 20 hour days hawking our film to family and Christian radio stations around the nation. We were going to recapture Hollywood and modern culture for Christ. This was my first experience with pray-till-you drop Protestant revivalists. The prayer intensity was curiously refreshing. I felt like an anthropologist visiting a strange tribe, and I went native for a short time. Despite our ardor, though, the movie was a complete box office flop. The opening statistics were bitterly ironic because the film had its best opening in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, one of the few areas of the country where we did absolutely no advance marketing.

This was how I lived the gamut of Western dogmatic error. Suffice it to say, I have learned a hard lesson: "Beware the sign of the fish" or anyone who promotes an exclusive answer to all of life’s problems through the slavish devotion to a dogma.