Once at the top of Hollywood’s A-List, by the mid-1990s director William Friedkin hadn’t made a solid box office hit in over two decades. In desperate need of (in the terms of his favorite sport) an easy lay-up, the former Oscar winner was reduced to banging out a Basic Instinct knockoff that frankly seemed beneath… Read More Money, Sex and Power | Jade (1995)
William Friedkin, who passed away last week at age 87, was a provocateur who enjoyed nothing more than to make movies that would push people’s buttons. In that regard, perhaps no project of his was more challenging than Cruising. The subject of intense criticism and controversy in its day, the film is still a hard… Read More One Day This Whole City’s Gonna Explode | Cruising (1980) Blu-ray
Although the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon petered out in the mid-1990s after the disaster of its third live-action movie and the end of its original TV cartoon, plans for another film that would circle back to animation were discussed throughout the early 2000s. At one point, John Woo was even supposed to direct it.… Read More Man, I Love Being a Turtle! | TMNT (2007) Blu-ray
After the surprise success of the 1990 live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Chinese studio Golden Harvest rushed out a sequel to hit theater screens less than a year later, hoping to cash-in again before Turtlemania subsided. From a business perspective, that was probably a smart decision. Although nowhere near as big a blockbuster, Teenage Mutant… Read More Go Ninja, Go Ninja, Go! | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991)
That the 1990 live-action movie version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was such a big hit in its day still blows my mind a little, even though I actually contributed to that success by going to see it in the theater. I was 15 at the time and, to be honest about it, felt a… Read More Totally Tubular, Dude! | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
While better known for his feature films, Steven Soderbergh occasionally plays around in series television as well, though his work in that medium has yet to break out to as much success. Based on the lack of buzz as the show just recently finished its six-episode run streaming on Max, it seems unlikely that the… Read More A Boy for a Boy | Full Circle (2023) Max Limited Series
The Peacock original series Twisted Metal is pretty much exactly what you should expect from a new streaming TV show based on a 1990s video game about heavily-armed cars that blow the hell out of one another. It’s big, dumb, obnoxious, and sometimes mildly amusing. Depending on your perspective, and your mood at the time… Read More A Milkman’s Job Is Never Done | Twisted Metal Season 1 (2023) on Peacock
Movies are an inherently sensationalized medium, and haunted house movies in particular often rely heavily upon cheap scare tactics to startle viewers into spilling their popcorn and clutching the hand of the date they brought to the theater. Subtlety is not generally a defining trait of the genre. Produced in 1961, director Jack Clayton’s The… Read More A Haunted Mansion and a Turned Screw | The Innocents (1961) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
By this point, I’m sure most people understand that the first Godzilla movie (or Gojira as originally known in Japan) from 1954 was, for all its inherent absurdity and cheese, designed and intended as something a little more thoughtful and introspective than just a schlocky giant monster fright flick. This is hardly a new observation.… Read More The Destroyer of Worlds | Godzilla (1954) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
Before he became a brand unto himself with a rabid cult fandom slavering to see his latest three-hour-long, bombastic IMAX spectacle, Christopher Nolan started his filmmaking career with a very modest, small art film called Following that was little seen by anyone until the Criterion Collection picked it up on home video. To be honest… Read More Nolan’s Inception | Following (1999) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
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