One of my intentions in doing the Film at 11 podcast is to challenge my children by making them watch movies that may be a little outside their comfort zones. For my son Thomas, that means I subjected him to Christopher Nolan’s 2010 mind-bender Inception this week. Although I knew Thomas would enjoy the action… Read More Film at 11 Podcast: Episode 52 | Inception (2010)
Still smarting from the critical lashing he took for his troubled 1990 adaptation of The Bonfire of the Vanities, director Brian De Palma retreated to what he felt was safer ground, on both figurative and literal levels. For his next outing, Raising Cain would be a return to the type of Hitchcock-flavored suspense thriller that… Read More Psycho Therapy | Raising Cain (1992) Blu-ray
As a parent, it hasn’t completely escaped my notice that I may have used the Film at 11 podcast to watch goofier and… how do I put this?… less challenging movies with my son Thomas, while I often save the somewhat weightier fare for Joseph. Not always, but perhaps more than I should. I realize… Read More Film at 11 Podcast: Episode 51 | Happy Gilmore (1996)
A movie that could only possibly have been created at the specific moment it was made, yet also simultaneously ahead of its time, Streets of Fire perplexed both critics and audiences during the summer of 1984, but has endured as a delightful cult property that, quite honestly, only gets better with age. I’ve watched the… Read More There’s Nothin’ Wrong with Goin’ Nowhere, Baby | Streets of Fire (1984) 4K Ultra HD
As the Film at 11 podcast reaches its milestone fiftieth episode, I take my son Thomas on a journey up to the heavens and back down to Earth again with Alfonso Cuarón’s blockbuster smash Gravity. He liked it, but then, this is a pretty difficult movie to dislike. From its nerve-wracking suspense to its still… Read More Film at 11 Podcast: Episode 50 | Gravity (2013)
In real life, the prospect of investigating a murder is a grim business that should be conducted with the utmost seriousness and fastidious attention to detail. Yet movies and TV frequently present the job as being so much fun, the type of thing a clever person or team can do in their spare time for… Read More Wouldn’t You Like to Do a Little Detecting Once in a While, Just for Fun? | The Thin Man (1934) Blu-ray
In the latest Film at 11 podcast, I take my son on a hunt for The Fugitive, the 1993 blockbuster thriller starring Harrison Ford as a wrongly convicted man on the run from the law. Joseph tells me he liked the movie a lot, even though he obviously had some problems following the plot. More… Read More Film at 11 Podcast: Episode 49 | The Fugitive (1993)
Remembered largely as one of the better Die Hard knockoffs that proliferated in the late 1980s and most of the following decade, the 1992 action thriller Under Siege makes almost no pretense of being anything other than what it is. The movie earned the nickname “Die Hard on a battleship” immediately upon release and wears… Read More This Is Not the Work of a Cook | Under Siege (1992) 4K Ultra HD
I thought I’d give my son Thomas a break on the Film at 11 podcast this week. Rather than forcing him to watch another old movie from the 1970s or 1980s with cheesy special effects he likely wouldn’t appreciate, I picked for him the 2014 Tom Cruise sci-fi action epic Edge of Tomorrow. I knew… Read More Film at 11 Podcast: Episode 48 | Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Released to a good bit of critical acclaim but limited commercial attention almost two decades ago, and mostly forgotten on both ends in the meantime, director Tom McCarthy’s The Visitor is a movie that not just deserves but actually needs to be rediscovered today. Not to date this review too much (we’ll see how this… Read More Either You Belong or You Don’t | The Visitor (2007)
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