The action-adventure fantasy Megaforce is a legendarily terrible movie that any fan of 1980s cheese ought to find very easy to fall in love with. The film is a very specific product of the early ’80s, a moment when the manufactured patriotism and military-industrial expansion of the Reagan era collided with a pop culture explosion… Read More I Love You, But You’re Hopeless | Megaforce (1982) Blu-ray
The qualities that caused Dragonslayer to fail at the box office in 1981 are very likely the same reasons the film has endured for so long as a cult item with many passionate fans. Released at a time when what passed for movies in the fantasy-adventure genre were typically jokey and juvenile in nature (see… Read More We Shall Live and the Beast Shall Die | Dragonslayer (1981) 4K Ultra HD
First published in 1963, John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was designed as a corrective against the far-fetched espionage fantasy of Ian Fleming’s popular James Bond series. A movie adaption followed two years later, released right at the height of Bond-mania. While perhaps not cultural milestones on quite the same… Read More You Can’t Be Less Wicked Than Your Enemy | The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
As a young film student in 1993, I walked out of the theater ecstatic about Tony Scott’s True Romance. I went back to see it a couple more times, but couldn’t convince any of my friends to go with me. From the title, they all assumed it must be a sappy rom-com that would hold… Read More If I’m With You, Then I’m With You | True Romance (1993) 4K Ultra HD
Released in the highly-competitive 1999 fall movie season against dozens of good-to-great films from other major artists, Steven Soderbergh’s modest crime thriller The Limey slipped through the cracks and drew little attention. Although kindly received by critics, it made no money and, even a couple decades later, remains one of the director’s least-seen works. Yet… Read More You Tell ‘im I’m Coming | The Limey (1999) 4K Ultra HD
Not only was Top Gun a massive blockbuster hit during the summer of 1986, the film remained so popular over the years that, when Paramount went looking for titles from its catalog to convert into 3D during that format’s revival in the early 2010s, of course Top Gun shot to the top of the list.… Read More The Need for Speed | Top Gun in 3D (Blu-ray)
Culture often seems to move in thirty-year cycles. Growing up back in the 1980s, it felt like nostalgia for the 1950s was everywhere, as my parents’ generation hit middle age and started pining for their own youths. Now here we are another three decades hence, only to find the United States in a renewed Cold… Read More Don’t Think, Just Do | Top Gun: Maverick (2022) 4K Ultra HD
The biggest blockbuster hit of 1986 and one of the most (if not the most) iconic films from that decade, Top Gun has remained enduringly popular over time – enough so that a sequel released 36 years later once again blew the roof off the theatrical box office. Is it actually a good movie, though?… Read More Take My Breath Away | Top Gun (1986) 4K Ultra HD
Confession time: As someone who has reviewed movies on home video for more than two decades, I simply cannot stand to watch most DVD or Blu-ray bonus features. The days when I might get excited for a director’s audio commentary or a lengthy making-of documentary about the film I just watched feel like a distant… Read More Remember When DVD and Blu-ray “Special Features” Actually Used to Be Special?
I seem to be out of step with both critical and popular opinion on Guillermo del Toro’s new stop-motion animated remake of Pinocchio. I watched that one without so much as checking Rotten Tomatoes or Letterboxd and thought it was kind of awful, only to find nearly everyone else in the world proclaiming it a… Read More No Strings on Me | Pinocchio (1940) Blu-ray
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