Former L.A. Times movie critic Jack Mathews says he'll retire from the New York Daily News at the end of February. He and his wife are moving to the Oregon coast.

What a ride it has been, literally. I’ve worked for some of the biggest and best newspapers in the country – the L.A. Times, the Detroit Free-Press, USA Today – and among them, they have sent me to Borneo, Thailand, North Africa, the Amazon, throughout Europe and from Costa Rica to Alaska on this continent.

I got certified as a SCUBA diver to report on the underwater scenes in the Bahamas with Tom Hanks and Darryl Hannah for Ron Howard’s “Splash!” I’ve sung (not well) with Rod Steiger in a restaurant in Durango, Mexico, played golf (not well, either) with Clint Eastwood on the Monterrey Peninsula, and spent a total of six months of spring on the French Riviera covering the Cannes Film Festival.

It’s been fun being paid to watch movies for 30 years, and I’m happy to say the last one was one of the best. That’s the reason I wanted to work through the Oscars before signing off. Then, it’s on to that long-gestating novel about the college co-ed considered by many to have been the Zodiac’s first victim (it was a murder I covered as a cub reporter) and to the breeze of the Pacific.

Read the rest at Romenesko Memos.