Tag: from the archive

FilmLeave a comment

From the Archive: Double Impact

Dan Seeger

I know it’s not true, but sometimes my memory tricks me into believing I needed to see a new Jean-Claude Van Damme movie about every other week when I was one-half of a movie review radio program in the early nineteen-nineties. Maybe that’s in part because, on deep level of my subconscious, I count this movie twice.   Double Impact is the kind of film that can frighten you just with its premise. It’s not that the film is intended to be a masterpiece of horror. It’s just that by discovering the film’s plot and reading through the credits, one realizes … Continue reading From the Archive: Double Impact

Everything Else, FilmLeave a comment

From the Archive: My Ballot, 2006

Dan Seeger

The other day, I provide my list of the twenty performances from 2016 films that I would have submitted on an Oscar ballot had I been given the opportunity to do so. This is an exercise is wishcasting that I have been indulging in for an absurdly long time. In online platforms alone, it has been over ten years of offering my haughty views of which performers were most deserving of awards consideration in any given year. Since ten is a nice round number, I thought I’d drag out my anointed score of acting titans from the film year 2006, … Continue reading From the Archive: My Ballot, 2006

FilmLeave a comment

From the Archive: Hot Shots!

Dan Seeger

This review was written for our old movie review radio show during a stretch of the summer of 1991 dire enough that one of the other films covered on the same episode was Return to the Blue Lagoon. While I’m already fairly down on the film in this review, I suspect Hot Shots! is one of those films that aged particularly poorly.  It may seem a little late for a parody of the Tom Cruise smash hit Top Gun. After all, it has been five years since Cruise squeezed his smug grin into a navy fighter plane and soared to … Continue reading From the Archive: Hot Shots!

FilmLeave a comment

From the Archive: Broken Flowers

Dan Seeger

The latest film from writer-director Jim Jarmusch dribbles into my town this weekend. As a good little cinema devotee, I should head out to the local multiplex to take it in — especially since the film has earned strong reviews, notably for star Adam Driver — but I’ll admit that I probably won’t. Since I wrote the piece shared here, I’ve come around to some of Jarmusch’s earlier features, but he remains a distancing artist for me. I could go on, but that’s basically what I write about in this review from my former online home, so…. I suppose I … Continue reading From the Archive: Broken Flowers

FilmLeave a comment

From the Archive: Pride & Prejudice

Dan Seeger

This was written fairly early in my return to movie reviews, when I was finally figuring out how to make reasonable use out these online tundras. When adapting a Jane Austen novel such as Pride & Prejudice, it must be sorely tempting to try every conceivable trick to make it visually engaging. This sort of period piece from the Approved Canon of Great Literature is especially prone to becoming the sort of staid veddy, veddy English film that Eddie Izzard once identified as “a room with a view with a staircase and a pond type movies.” (“What is it, Sebastian? … Continue reading From the Archive: Pride & Prejudice

FilmLeave a comment

From the Archive: Little Man Tate

Dan Seeger

Because today I want to this space to feature a film directed by a bad-ass woman. This was written for our weekly movie review radio show in the fall of 1991, which was a helluva year for Jodie Foster. Thankfully, she was duly awarded for her accomplishments. It’s pretty easy to figure out what attracted Jodie Foster to Scott Frank’s screenplay Little Man Tate, the story of a youngster with pronounced talent who’s showered with attention because of that gift, and who has a deep, special bond with mother. It sounds remarkably like the story of Little Woman Foster, the … Continue reading From the Archive: Little Man Tate

FilmLeave a comment

From the Archive: The Temp

Dan Seeger

  I’m among those who try to avoid the term “guilty pleasure,” but there are times when it absolutely applies. This observation brings us straight to The Temp, one of the rare movies of my college radio reviewing tenure that I reported my viewpoint with a degree of sheepishness. But I also stand by this review. It’s been ages since I’ve seen it, but I know I had a blast watching this every time I stumbled upon a cable TV showing. Director Tom Holland has always approached his horror films with a certain cheekiness. Fright Night was a terrific vampire film … Continue reading From the Archive: The Temp