A secret government conspiracy to cover up the existence of aliens, you say? Where have I heard that one before? Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day (running in theaters as I write this) feels really late to the game on this subject, seeing that The X Files had eleven seasons of it on television, starting way back… Read More Film After 11 Podcast | The X Files: Fight the Future (1998)
Cyborgs, clones, trained fleas, and a talking disembodied brain in a fish tank are just a few among the countless idiosyncrasies found in The City of Lost Children, a Dickensian tale of societal corruption and decay by way of Jules Verne and Terry Gilliam. I’ve loved this movie from the first time I saw it,… Read More You Fell into a Strange Net, Huh? | The City of Lost Children (1995) 4K Ultra HD
The Film After 11 podcast’s alphabetical marathon faced another dilemma when we hit the letter “V” this week. Put simply, pickings were very slim for this one. What I settled on was A View to a Kill, Roger Moore’s final outing as secret agent James Bond 007, but also my son Thomas’ first exposure to… Read More Film After 11 Podcast | A View to a Kill (1985)
The actors who’ve played James Bond in the movie series have a tendency – not always, but often enough – to go out on their weakest notes: Connery with Diamonds Are Forever, Moore with A View to a Kill, and definitely Pierce Brosnan with Die Another Day. Brosnan caught something of a raw deal with… Read More Double-0 Status Rescinded | Die Another Day (2002) Blu-ray
What movie beginning with the letter “U” could my son and I watch for this week’s installment of the Film After 11 alphabetical marathon? Unforgiven? Good movie, but rated R. U-571? Meh. While we could talk about it being complete historical BS, it’s pretty mediocre and I’d rather watch a better submarine movie instead. The… Read More Film After 11 Podcast | UHF (1989)
Long before it became a respected cult item and a franchise-starter that would launch sequels, reboots, and a pretty darn good TV series too, The Evil Dead was just a gory splatterfest made for no money by an ambitious kid (barely 20-years-old when he shot it!) and his pals out at a little cabin in… Read More Not Another Peep, Time to Go to Sleep | The Evil Dead (1981) 4K Ultra HD
As the Film After 11 podcast hits the letter “T” in this year’s alphabetical marathon, my son Joseph specially requested a visit to Titanic, James Cameron’s monster blockbuster hit about the most famous shipwreck of all time. I was a little shocked that he wanted to watch a three-and-a-quarter-hour movie and expected him to get… Read More Film After 11 Podcast | Titanic (1997)
By the early 1970s, filmmaker Peter Yates was likely best known for directing the Steve McQueen star vehicle (pun intended) Bullitt, which had been a huge box office hit in 1968. His subsequent few films, unfortunately, failed to capitalize much on that success. Returning to the crime genre, Yates made two heist thrillers back-to-back between… Read More No Honor Among Thieves | The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
A heist thriller starring Steve McQueen near the height of his career, directed by Sam Peckinpah, and scripted by Walter Hill, based on a book by crime novelist Jim Thompson, The Getaway surely sounds like a can’t-lose combination of talent. Critics of the day felt otherwise, but audiences ate it up, making the film one… Read More Can’t Trust a Thing These Days | The Getaway (1972) Blu-ray
Con artists, and specifically con men, are a subject of much fascination for David Mamet, the acclaimed playwright behind Pulitzer-winning drama Glengarry Glen Ross. That 1983 play (and its subsequent 1992 movie adaptation) depicted conniving real estate agents trying to sucker unwitting clients into buying worthless property by any means necessary, not the least of… Read More Don’t Trust Nobody | House of Games (1987) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
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