Category: Film

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Trivia Answer of the Day: The S.S. Cooney

Dan Seeger

This coming weekend, I’ll participate in The World’s Largest Trivia ContestTM. As per tradition, this week is filled with idle reminiscing about memorable answers in past years. For this go-around, I’m further commemorating an anniversary. The weekend before the contest, the radio station sponsoring Trivia holds a midnight movie screening as a kickoff event, a practice that just celebrated its twenty-fifth straight year. Though it had been done a couple times prior to my tenure at the student-run radio station, I was the one who revived the practice, drawing upon my dual status as an on-air movie critic and a popcorn slinger … Continue reading Trivia Answer of the Day: The S.S. Cooney

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From the Archive: Death Warrant

Dan Seeger

Shortly after the debut of the radio show The Reel Thing, the film review program I co-hosted from 1990 to 1993, it felt like we were inundated with Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. We weren’t, but there were two within our first few months on the air. That felt like punishment enough. As a general rule, even the worst movies got one star on our four-star rating scale. If I dropped below that, I was really serious about how much I hated it. Deran Sarafian, the director of this film, went on to be a prolific, respectable television director. The screenplay is … Continue reading From the Archive: Death Warrant

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Then Playing: Unfriended

Dan Seeger

I usually reserve the longer reviews for films still playing in theaters, but sometimes a title I’ve caught up on later merits a few extra words. Appropriately, the conversation took place on Facebook Messenger. I was discussing Unfriended with my friend Khaetlyn, who had recommended the film in the first place, offering the assurance that it was far more than the trashy, cheapo found footage horror film it appeared to be from all the floridly urgent promotion around it. Shortly after seeing it, I was about to let her know that she was correct, when she framed her curiosity about my reaction … Continue reading Then Playing: Unfriended

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Greatish Performances #23

Dan Seeger

#23 — Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Johnson in Creed (Ryan Coogler, 2015) I don’t begrudge Sylvester Stallone the victory lap he got to take for his seventh performance as the hangdog Philadelphia boxer Rocky Balboa. While he’s perpetrated a great many heinous acts on moviegoers (he didn’t just star in Rhinestone, Cobra, Over the Top, and Cliffhanger; he also helped write them!), there’s something appealing, even charming, about his unlikely perseverance in the business. There might have been a little more sourness had the Academy Award nomination he received actually turned into a win, but, as was the case … Continue reading Greatish Performances #23

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Now Playing: 10 Cloverfield Lane

Dan Seeger

10 Cloverfield Lane is the feature directorial debut of Dan Trachtenberg, and it credits John Campbell, Matthew Stuecken, and Whiplash filmmaker Damien Chazelle as crafters of the story and screenplay. And yet the name that looms over it is that of producer J.J. Abrams. This could be understandably explained by the studio’s enthusiasm to the film to the contributing creator who presided over the all-time top grossing film at the domestic box office, even if he achieved that particular inside-the-park home run after starting on third base. Instead, 10 Cloverfield Lane feels like it belongs to Abrams because it adheres to his … Continue reading Now Playing: 10 Cloverfield Lane