Amidst the rapturous critical reception that Terrence Malick’s Badlands received upon its 1974 release, one dissenting voice stood out. While Vincent Canby called Malick’s feature debut “a most important and exciting film” in the New York Times, Pauline Kael turned in a scathing review at the New Yorker, breathing fire at everything from the performances…
The names Pedro Almodóvar and Tilda Swinton are individually enough to spark interest in the vast majority of film lovers. (If they don’t, then I honestly question your taste.) But both of those names, together, on the same project? Which happens to be the first-ever English-language film from the renowned Spanish auteur, responsible for such…
Films claimed to be shot in one long, continuous take are often wondrous technical achievements, from Hitchcock’s Rope to Sam Mendes’ war epic 1917. Most of these contain several hidden cuts in order to preserve the illusion and to make it logistically easier to achieve. source: Shout! Studios Rolling a camera for 90 minutes uninterrupted…
Protesting goes before the court in The Trial of the Chicago 7, the latest from writer/director Aaron Sorkin. Much like today, the ’60s was a time when America was showing its warts. The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War had given people plenty of reasons to get out in the streets and protest, and by…
Welcome to Movie DNA, a column that recognizes the direct and indirect cinematic roots of new movies. Learn some film history, become a more well-rounded viewer, and enjoy likeminded works of the past. This entry recommends movies to watch after Enola Holmes. With adaptations and inspired works going back to the dawn of cinema, Sherlock Holmes…
Page To Screen is a column examining literary adaptations in conversation with their source material. Call up your book club and set out some canapés, we’re talking reading. The Goldfinch, John Crowley’s adaptation of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, is many things. It is a morality tale about the value of art and…
When looking back on history, there is a plethora of knowledge and perspectives that have still yet to be tackled. And only by truly seeing the entire picture can we understand the past and move forward with the future. Though, with racism, sexism, and oppression in place, many stories have remained untold and unknown to…
Welcome to Carnage Classified, a monthly column where we break down the historical and social influence of all things horror, then rank the films of each month’s category accordingly. Franchises, movements, filmmakers, subgenres, etc. This entry is about Dario Argento’s giallo films and includes a ranking of his six best from the subgenre! There’s something…
Over the past several weeks and ongoing, there have been many movies made available via streaming that normally would never see the light of day inside a movie theater. I am a strong supporter of the theater experience, but even I have to admit that the creation of widely available virtual cinema screenings of rare…
The balance of power and the legitimacy of violence has been shifting for some time throughout the world and the challenge of defining illegal force has been building, growing into a cry for change. As citizens of a state, country, or republic, we give the power to the institution, yet we have no power to…
In the No Time To Die Countdown, Jake Tropila takes a look back at every Bond film – official and unofficial – in anticipation of the release of the latest entry. I’ll be the first to admit that these Bond revisits have been largely agreeable affairs, bordering on being excessively effusive in praise. Sure, things…
A couple of years ago, I learned that The Karate Kid would be rebooted as a television series. Like others of a certain age that grew up with a particular property, I had my doubts. Rebooting or bringing back a franchise, whatever you want to call it, is a risky move. You have to appeal both to…
At several points, while watching Repossession, the work of co-directors Ming Siu Goh and Scott C. Hillyard, I had to ask myself: “Did that really just happen?” These lapses in the understanding of timeline and plot seem at times intentional – often during unexpected flashback sequences that suggest something is amiss with the outwardly straightforward…
As Abraham Lincoln once famously said, don’t believe everything you read on the internet. You have to be savvy in the Information Age, and the garish katzenjammer of fake news, clickbait and “alternative facts” makes a battle out of separating the wheat from the chaff. I’m skeptical about a lot of things on the world…
There’s a monster afoot (apaw?) in The Wolf of Snow Hollow, the latest from writer/director Jim Cummings. John already had enough going on before people started getting ripped apart. A sobriety battle, an aging father, and the joys of a teenage daughter were keeping him plenty busy, then strange murders started happening in his otherwise quiet town….
Acting is an art form, and behind every iconic character is an artist expressing themselves. Welcome to The Great Performances, a bi-weekly column exploring the art behind some of film and television’s greatest characters. This time, we turn the spotlight to Will Smith’s breakout role on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Will Smith starred in The…
Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video that explores the “first feature-length mashup,” Dinosaur Hunters. Dinosaur Hunters makes good on the implicit pitch of late-career films like The Expendables. Namely: wouldn’t it be great if all the action movie stars from…
Movies love the movies. From Man with a Movie Camera to Schizopolis, many iconic films are drenched in cinephilia and self-referentiality. But no movie loves movies as much as Film Title Poem, a 67-minute experimental traversal of film history, both canonical and personal, entirely by way of title cards. Watching Jennifer West’s Film Title Poem…
Oh no, not a reboot of an existing universe with a female-centric spin. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, except that it’s a well-trod and fraught approach, one with naysayers coming from all sides. When it’s not the vocal few who seemingly hate women in their universes (gag me) torpedoing a perfectly fine movie…
The kids are not all right in Spontaneous, the directorial debut of Brian Duffield. They’re not okay because a bunch of high school kids are blowing up. Popping, as one character puts it as if a mysterious illness is spreading and causing the messy tragedies. In the meantime, they’re still teenagers, blithely going about their business…
Streaming might be the future, but physical media is still the present. It’s also awesome, depending on the title, the label, and the release, so each week we take a look at the new Blu-rays and DVDs making their way into the world. Welcome to this week in Home Video for September 22nd, 2020! Our pick…