As I noted recently, it’s been a long time since our household made the proper commitment to a good ol’ fashioned Bad Movie Night. Our tradition is long and honored: a double feature, preferably with some sort of link and … Continue reading Bad Movie Night — Battleship/John Carter
As I started gathering some digital resources to provide supporting research in writing about the new film Gone Girl, I was briefly taken aback when reminded that Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name came out just two years ago, … Continue reading Beautiful girl, lovely dress, where she is now I can only guess
I’m overjoyed that I’m presenting a review in which I use the word “downright” twice. As the Gone Girl think pieces begin to pile up, let’s revisit the last decent work of a director who has genuine threads of misogyny running through his work, shall we? This was written for the Reel Thing Reports that ran a couple times a day on WWSP-90FM after my graduation necessitated retiring the weekly program of the same (or same-ish, to be accurate) name. Almost all of director Brian De Palma’s films include at least one passage that is put together with such impressive … Continue reading From the Archive: Carlito’s Way
#13 — Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) Sometimes when a work of art can reasonably be deemed prescient, what’s actually happening is the fiction is tapping into a fundamental truth about human nature, something that can carry forward and be … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Thirteen
The Skeleton Twins begins with the siblings of the title a continent apart, but both at the same dismal low point. It turns out that Milo (Bill Hader) is a step ahead of his sister, Maggie (Kristen Wiig). As she’s … Continue reading Poor skeleton steps out, dressed up in bad blood
It makes me a little sad that it’s now been well over two years since the last time I had cause to offer a Bad Movie Night post. This used to be one of our proudest household traditions. Well, wait. … Continue reading From the Archive: Ghost Rider and The Wicker Man
#14 — The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957) There’s so much about The Seventh Seal that amazes me, all of it timeless and yet compounded by placing the film in the context of its era. I love the film’s experimentalism, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Fourteen
Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943). Though he would sometimes demure at the question, this was typically the title Hitchcock offered up as his default answer when asked about his personal favorite among his hefty, dazzling oeuvre. I can’t really back him up on that, even though I can completely understand how this one would loom large for the Master. He’d made great films before this (The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, and Suspicion among them), but there’s something about this one that feels like the Hitchcock cinematic voice locked in for good. The film follows Charlie Newton (Joseph Cotten), a … Continue reading Arzner, Byrkit, Hitchcock, Pakula, Tartakovsky
Ah, yes, the home video segment. How very early nineties. Wasn’t that a time? Within a few months, this was sort of a filler segment on the show as we were invariably writing about films we’d already covered previously, and we didn’t necessarily have something new and riveting to add. The main servicing to previous reviews was a consideration of how something might play better or worse on the television screen, then much smaller and squarer, of course. Usually, we each covered one movie new to video. I’m not sure why I doubled up here. We must have had a … Continue reading From the Archive: Cliffhanger and Sliver
#15 — 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957) In the annals of cinema, there are undoubtedly more impressive debut directorial efforts than Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men, but there are few that so perfectly captured and forecasted the defining strengths … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Fifteen
Coffee for Two 