From the Archive: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

I find it a little dismaying that I can reach back twenty-five years to find reviews that are incredibly pertinent to new blockbuster-wannabe releases. James Cameron attests that the latest stab at perpetuating the franchise, Terminator: Genisys, is the true follow-up to his own final cinematic word the adventures of Sarah Connor and the cyborg assassin from the future. (I’m pretty sure he also once maintained that the theme park attraction he helped direct is also canon.) I don’t blame him for disavowing the other movies, but I know at least a couple people who would argue vehemently (preferably over beers) … Continue reading From the Archive: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

One for Friday: Sam Phillips, “Tripping Over Gravity”

I’m fairly certain I found my way to Sam Phillips through Rolling Stone magazine. As I’ve noted before, I was a devoted disciple on the magazine through my high school years, doing the best I could to glean from it what I needed to know about the vast land of rock ‘n’ roll that my local radio stations weren’t providing. That got me trapped in the magazine’s wearying predilections (Neil Young is an important artist, but not every damn album in a masterpiece), but I occasionally had just enough of an instinct to remember the albums that were offered effusive if … Continue reading One for Friday: Sam Phillips, “Tripping Over Gravity”

Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Eight

#28 — Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946) It seems Notorious began with a desire on the part of director Alfred Hitchock to cast Ingrid Bergman as a woman involved in deceits and duplicitous machinations at the highest levels. This inkling would have come to him at right around the time Bergman was collecting accolades and a bright, shiny Academy Award for her work in Gaslight and as he was on the cusp of working with the actress on Spellbound, a film similarly preoccupied with the way madness can infiltrate as person’s psyche, including through the manipulations of others. Whether or not Hitchcock … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Eight

Garland, Howard, Mangold, Ross, Taylor

Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015). Novelist and screenwriter Garland makes his directorial debut with this smart, chilly science fiction film about a reclusive tech magnate (Oscar Isaac) who flies up an employee (Domhnall Gleeson), supposedly selected at random, to help him test out some remarkable new artificial intelligence he’s created. Complicating the test subjects reactions is the little detail that the A.I. has been loaded into an android with a notably lovely female form and visage (Alicia Vikander). Garland builds his script with almost malicious psychological cunning, fomenting uncertainty as to whether the genius inventor is a simmering madman or … Continue reading Garland, Howard, Mangold, Ross, Taylor

My Writers: John Irving

When I was a kid, few things drew me to a book more assuredly than the existence of a corresponding movie. This could go in either direction, by the way. The nineteen-seventies and eighties were a sort of golden age for novelizations of movies, and I was happy to devour them. Similarly, if a movie was based on a book, inexpensive paperback copies were usually readily available, stocked generously into racks at the supermarket. In retrospect, I think I used it as a rough guidepost as to which books were worthy of my scattered attention. If the story existed in … Continue reading My Writers: John Irving

Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Nine

#29 — Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944) There is something about film noir during its heyday that bought out the twisty darkness in every filmmaker who waded into its murky depths. While director Otto Preminger had a career that was varied enough to defy easy categorization, I generally think of his works as clean and resolutely open-eyed, utilizing careful craft to tell relatively straightforward stories. Even a great film fringed with darkness like Anatomy of a Murder becomes methodical under Preminger’s guidance, almost anticipating modern procedurals in its keen attention to the simple progression of events, the whirring machinery of a court … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Nine

College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 30 – 28

30. Bush, Sixteen Stone A few year backs, when I called a different online space my digital home, I spent an entire day watching Michael Bay films and chronicling the experience for anyone who cared to read. I’d sworn off the efforts of the director following the appalling Armageddon, and decided, for reasons that escape me now, to watch everything I’d missed, in chronological order, across one morning and afternoon, culminating with an evening viewing of Transformers. I tried reading a book afterward and couldn’t do it. That’s how bad the endless march of terrible filmmaking scrambled my brain. While recently … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 30 – 28

From the Archive: Problem Child 2

As Ted 2 arrives in theaters, now seems like a good time to offer a reminder that puerile comedy sequels have been a part of summer since the days when Seth MacFarlane was only bothering his friends with inane pop culture references and his sexist, racist, self-involved nonsense. Now he makes millions of it and inflicts it on the whole culture. Thanks again for rescuing Family Guy, Cartoon Network! Anyway, we used a four-star rating scale on our radio movie review show, but one star was generally as low as a film could go. We reserved the 1/2 star and zero star assessments for the … Continue reading From the Archive: Problem Child 2

One for Friday: Daryl and the Chaperones, “My Baby’s a Spy”

As happens periodically in this weekly space, I’m drawing the song to share from the bevy of splendid musical wonders I plucked from an old blog called Little Hits. As with other material parked on the World Wide Web, all of the writing on the blog remains, though it’s approaching ten years since it’s been updated. All the song links seem to be defunct, so consider this entry another modest attempt at preserving some of the extraordinary music shared on the blog that first inspired me to dig into my own collection to help fill Fridays. (With rare exceptions, I don’t … Continue reading One for Friday: Daryl and the Chaperones, “My Baby’s a Spy”

Thinking, wishing, hoping that you’ll never feel the same again

Late in the closing credits of Inside Out, the latest feature from Pixar Animation Studios, there’s a dedication offered out by the filmmaking team to their collected children, urging them to never grow older. Ever. That’s hardly an original sentiment for parents to express. It even borders on the banal. That’s not what makes it notable. What makes it truly stand out is the way the wish for eternal childhood is at complete odds with the message of the movies that’s just preceded it. The creators may want their kids to stay kids. The film argues, persuasively, that growing up … Continue reading Thinking, wishing, hoping that you’ll never feel the same again