Dinner and a Movie

Welcome to Dinner With Max Jenke, a blog concerning my ongoing - and sometimes personally exasperating - love of horror and exploitation. And say hello to our dinner companion at right, Max Jenke, as played by the late character actor Brion James in 1989's The Horror Show. Why Max? And why are we having dinner with him? Well, the notion of sharing a table with the feral-faced fiend just struck me as funny. My only other candidate for this blog's name was Nancy's Hall Pass so it was going to be an arcane '80s horror reference either way.

My tastes tend to be eclectic, so there's no telling what my reaction to any given film might be. I'm often genuinely surprised myself by the films I end up liking or disliking - which is an experience I always welcome. I hate feeling that my reaction to any movie will be a foregone conclusion. One of my main gripes with film criticism as it exists today, in fact, is that the Internet culture seems to foster a rush to judgement. There seems to be a need to reach a popular consensus even before a movie is released rather than to grapple with differences of opinion or to surprise each other with divergent views.

I think a lot of writers don't want to risk looking unsophisticated in front of their peers, especially in a medium like the Internet where - as opposed to publishing in a magazine or newspaper - there's so much immediate feedback and readers show so little patience for views they consider to be foolish or out of step.

Well, I have no issues at all with looking foolish or being out of step. I love horror movies - and if you do too, I know we'll get along just fine.