With the huge success of Dances with Wolves and Unforgiven, Westerns made a big comeback on cinema screens in the early 1990s. Not all of them were awards bait, however. The likes of Tombstone or Young Guns II were just rowdy fun, while director Sam Raimi (creator of the Evil Dead franchise) dabbled with a… Read More Do We Have Any Real Gunmen in This Room? | The Quick and the Dead (1995) 4K Ultra HD
Still smarting from the critical lashing he took for his troubled 1990 adaptation of The Bonfire of the Vanities, director Brian De Palma retreated to what he felt was safer ground, on both figurative and literal levels. For his next outing, Raising Cain would be a return to the type of Hitchcock-flavored suspense thriller that… Read More Psycho Therapy | Raising Cain (1992) Blu-ray
A movie that could only possibly have been created at the specific moment it was made, yet also simultaneously ahead of its time, Streets of Fire perplexed both critics and audiences during the summer of 1984, but has endured as a delightful cult property that, quite honestly, only gets better with age. I’ve watched the… Read More There’s Nothin’ Wrong with Goin’ Nowhere, Baby | Streets of Fire (1984) 4K Ultra HD
In real life, the prospect of investigating a murder is a grim business that should be conducted with the utmost seriousness and fastidious attention to detail. Yet movies and TV frequently present the job as being so much fun, the type of thing a clever person or team can do in their spare time for… Read More Wouldn’t You Like to Do a Little Detecting Once in a While, Just for Fun? | The Thin Man (1934) Blu-ray
Remembered largely as one of the better Die Hard knockoffs that proliferated in the late 1980s and most of the following decade, the 1992 action thriller Under Siege makes almost no pretense of being anything other than what it is. The movie earned the nickname “Die Hard on a battleship” immediately upon release and wears… Read More This Is Not the Work of a Cook | Under Siege (1992) 4K Ultra HD
Released to a good bit of critical acclaim but limited commercial attention almost two decades ago, and mostly forgotten on both ends in the meantime, director Tom McCarthy’s The Visitor is a movie that not just deserves but actually needs to be rediscovered today. Not to date this review too much (we’ll see how this… Read More Either You Belong or You Don’t | The Visitor (2007)
Love Roman Holiday though I may, Audrey Hepburn won her Oscar for the wrong movie. Arguments can be made for Breakfast and Tiffany’s or, I suppose, My Fair Lady, and I wouldn’t deny that she’s luminous in all of them. However, for my money, the actress gave her best performance in Wait Until Dark, the… Read More The World’s Champion Blind Lady | Wait Until Dark (1967) Blu-ray
Despite effectively kicking off the modern era of superhero blockbusters with its first movie in 2000, Fox’s X-Men franchise suffered serious quality swing issues with later installments and started to feel like an also-ran when competing against the even more successful Marvel Cinematic Universe. The series seemed to bounce back a little with the prequel… Read More Think Peaceful Thoughts | X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) Blu-ray
In the very brief span of just nineteen months, between multiple Oscar wins for The Deer Hunter in April 1979 to the disastrous financial and critical failure of Heaven’s Gate in November 1980, Michael Cimino went from being a celebrated Hollywood darling to a pariah in the filmmaking industry. The director wouldn’t attempt (or wouldn’t… Read More You’re Too Impressed with Yourself | Year of the Dragon (1985) Blu-ray
Even among those who’d call themselves fans (myself included), I expect most will admit that Welsh filmmaker Peter Greenaway is an acquired taste. His work actively defies traditional mainstream conventions. Greenaway makes art films, the type best appreciated in a museum setting rather than a multiplex. To that end, Greenaway’s 1985 A Zed & Two… Read More You Exhaust Me with Your Obsessions | A Zed & Two Noughts (1985) Blu-ray
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