This week’s double-length episode of the Film After 11 podcast is a doozy. With Spider-Man: Brand New Day in theaters, my son Thomas and I started off talking about its predecessor, 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. Somewhere along the way, the conversation went off the rails and… well, let’s just say that, like any Marvel… Read More Film After 11 Podcast | Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Hilariously, during an early scene in Brian De Palma’s 1978 supernatural thriller The Fury, a character actually says out loud, “No particular talent is needed to achieve.this.” Wow, could a better summation of the movie exist? That’s it right there. Review over. The end. No, I’ll go on a little if I must. The Fury… Read More Anybody Can Achieve Alpha | The Fury (1978) Blu-ray
The time has come for another new episode of the Film After 11 podcast. This week, I introduce my son Joseph to the classic Bill Murray comedy Groundhog Day. The classic Bill Murray comedy Groundhog Day. Bill Murray comedy Groundhog Day. You see what I did there? Really subtle, huh? I’d make a joke about… Read More Film After 11 Podcast | Groundhog Day (1993)
A title like Experiment in Terror seems primed for disappointment six decades and change later. Could any film from 1962 actually scare a jaded audience conditioned by modern horror movies to expect graphic violence and gore from something with a name like that? Perhaps not, even probably not, especially once you tell those same viewers… Read More I’m Fairly Well Conditioned to Shock | Experiment in Terror (1962) Blu-ray
We’re all shook up on the Film After 11 podcast this week as we tackle director Ron Underwood’s 1990 horror comedy Tremors. The movie wasn’t much of a box office hit during its theatrical run, but quickly grew into a cult classic on home video. My son Thomas has taken an interest in horror movies… Read More Film After 11 Podcast | Tremors (1990)
In many interviews and talks, Peter Greenaway has declared with some certainty and no small amount of pomposity that narrative and character development are not only inessential, but weaknesses of the cinematic medium. He treats his work not as “movies” in the widely-accepted sense, but as a form of visual art in motion, the sort… Read More A Hundred Is Enough | Drowning by Numbers (1988) 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
I learned a somewhat interesting fact from watching Paul Schrader’s 1982 quasi-remake of Cat People. Actually, I had to look it up afterward. Regardless, now I know that leopards and panthers are the same species, differentiated mainly by color. Perhaps that’s common knowledge to others, but I’d never given it any thought previously, until confused… Read More Kinski Skinski | Cat People (1982) 4K Ultra HD
Vegas, baby! The Film After 11 podcast travels to the city of sin this week, in the company of George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and a whole bunch of famous friends. Yes, Film After 11 takes on Ocean’s Eleven in an 11-minute review with a 12-year-old viewer. Maybe I should have done this last year for… Read More Film After 11 Podcast | Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Ever since the phrase “auteur theory” was coined in the early 1960s, audiences and film connoisseurs who care to notice such things have typically considered a director to be the main artistic guiding force behind any movie. That thought often applies even in retrospect to older films, but wasn’t always the case, especially not during… Read More I Like the Dark, It’s Friendly | Cat People (1942) Criterion Blu-ray
While Christopher Nolan may not have invented the ingenious “backwards” gimmick, he did perfect it. Memorably, even Seinfeld beat Nolan to the punch in a famous episode three years earlier. Perhaps the most innovative prior example was Harold Pinter’s play (and 1983 movie) Betrayal. Even if the reverse-chronology narrative isn’t Nolan’s invention, nor is it… Read More Forth and Back | Memento (2000)
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