The movie that won Jane Fonda her first acting Oscar, Klute deserves equal credit for director Alan J. Pakula, master of the 1970s paranoid conspiracy thriller. If not a conspiracy story, per se (though a little bit so), Klute is certainly rife with paranoia, and Pakula subverts the thriller genre in unexpected and remarkably effective… Read More The Sin, the Glitter, the Wickedness | Klute (1971) Blu-ray
The appeal of films by Jim Jarmusch, especially his early work, is difficult to explain to someone who’s never watched one, and frankly even to some who have. His movies don’t exactly feel or behave like anything you’d expect from a regular movie. 1989’s Mystery Train, for example, has little story or plot to speak… Read More Some Days Just Go Like That | Mystery Train (1989) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
A tiny British film made for the equivalent of less than $3 million, Shallow Grave created quite a stir on the festival circuit in 1994 and in wider release the following year. If not necessarily in the same league as some of the mega-blockbusters of the era, the movie was a solid hit that launched… Read More A Material Calculation | Shallow Grave (1994) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
Likely best known in film appreciation circles as the feature directing debut for Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line, The Tree of Life), Badlands is both one of Malick’s shortest movies and seemingly his most straightforward. A lovers-on-the-run crime tale inspired by the real-life Charles Starkweather murder spree of the late 1950s, the film no… Read More Nobody’s Comin’ Out of This Thing Happy | Badlands (1973) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
One of cinema’s all-time great political thrillers, John Frankenheimer’s 1962 adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate paints a depressing portrait of America unraveling from within, where the country’s government is torn apart by the collusion of its own leaders willfully (even happily!) allowing themselves to be manipulated by malicious foreign aggressors for personal gain at the… Read More The Wires Have Been Pulled | The Manchurian Candidate (1962) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
While technically his third feature film as director, Terry Gilliam’s 1981 Time Bandits was only his second outside of Monty Python and, in most fans’ eyes, the first that truly marked him as an auteur in his own right. As a surprise box office smash (a top-ten money earner for the year on the short-list… Read More You Stick with These Boys, You Have a Great Future | Time Bandits (1981) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
Originally intended as a direct-to-video production, the 1992 crime thriller One False Move received so much advance praise from critics that distributor I.R.S. Releasing (the short-lived film branch of music label I.R.S. Records) opted to give it a limited theatrical run first. While the movie ultimately made only a pittance at the box office, it… Read More Welcome to Star City, Boys | One False Move (1992) Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD
Released in early 1992, advertising for the crime thriller Deep Cover played up star Laurence Fishburne’s involvement in the previous summer’s breakout hit Boyz n the Hood and generally tried to connect the film to the run of other so-called ‘hood movies that had made waves during that period. Although it scored positive reviews from… Read More A Scumbag for the Right Side | Deep Cover (1992) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
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
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