How does one describe a movie like Absolute Beginners? That’s a question I’ve been pondering since first watching it recently, a Blu-ray copy having sat on my shelf for just over a decade. I’m not sure it can be described. The best I’ve come up with is that the film feels like it exists in… Read More You’ll Never Stop Me from Having It All | Absolute Beginners (1986) Blu-ray
Not even the troubled production and financial failure of his masterpiece Brazil could prevent director Terry Gilliam from embarking on an even bigger and more elaborate project next. His subject: the filmed biography of a man who was, at one time, the most famous and revered individual on the Earth and its moon. As recounted… Read More This Is Precisely the Sort of Thing That No One Ever Believes | The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) Criterion 4K Ultra HD
In a very weird way, watching the original 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer feature film proves what a genius Joss Whedon once was. That anyone could take such a lousy, inept movie and turn it into a long-running and beloved TV series is an almost miraculous feat few could achieve. Unfortunately, beyond that, I find… Read More Does the Word “Duh” Mean Anything to You? | Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) Blu-ray
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 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 Brosnan caught something of a raw deal with… Read More Double-0 Status Rescinded | Die Another Day (2002) Blu-ray
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
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
Like countless fictional films about the making of other fictional films (Day for Night, The Player, etc.), French director Olivier Assayas’ 1996 comedy (?) Irma Vep attempts to blur some sort of line between fantasy and reality. However, this one begs a particularly frustrating question: Can a movie really be a satire of pretentious French… Read More Pretentious French Movies About Pretentious French Movies Are Still Pretentious | Irma Vep (1996) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
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