The recently released Criterion Collection Blu-ray Special Edition of Michelangelo Antonioni’s masterpiece Blow-Up is a thing of pure beauty. From the gorgeous packaging to the wonderful and thoughtful full-color booklet to the plethora of bonus features, they’ve given one of the best films of all time superb physical media treatment. Blow-Up is a true study…
I don’t really feel that I can add all that much new to the chorus of praise that Christopher Nolan has rightfully received for his tour de force action film Dunkirk. Just go out and see it. You don’t need me, or anyone else, to tell you how superb it is. I thought it was…
Richard Sarafian’s 1971 road movie Vanishing Point essentially puts on a 98 minute clinic of “being cool.” The cinematography by the amazing John A. Alonzo (Scarface, Chinatown, Harold and Maude) is out of control awesome, the swift editing by Stefan Arnsen keeps a beyond-fast pace, and the on-location shooting and stunt driving is truly tremendous….
War for the Planet of the Apes is Grade-A blockbuster filmmaking. I will forever judge and compare the CGI in every movie that I see moving forward against the FLAWLESS work done in this film. Seriously. What the hell? I couldn’t believe what I was watching. Everything about this movie works like gangbusters, from the…
The thoroughly unnerving and slow-burn psychological drama Christine will almost certainly send a shiver down your spine, especially if you have no clue about the real events that inspired this deeply unsettling motion picture, which was directed with a continued sense of cinematic implacability by the sharp and extremely talented filmmaker Antonio Campos (Afterschool, Simon…
I’m a fan of all of the works from writer/director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Her, Where the Wild Things Are), but the 2002 meta-comedy Adaptation is probably my favorite piece from idiosyncratic and deeply thought provoking cinematic voice. Written with his singular brand of existential dread and tack-sharp satire by Charlie Kaufman (Synecdoche, NY,…
1984’s The Last Starfighter, energetically directed by Nick Castle from a script written by Jonathan Betuel (MY SCIENCE PROJECT POWER!!!), was one of my favorite films as a little kid, and much to my surprise, it still holds up as an example of a solid, low-budget Star Wars/Star Trek rip off that knew how to…
Interstellar, Christopher Nolan’s visually astonishing and mind-bending science-fiction epic, is an overwhelming experience. At least it was for me when I saw it on an IMAX screen, and it continues to be every single time I pop in the Blu-ray or watch it on HBO. It’s a $165 million anti-blockbuster that was based on an…
The Men Who Stare At Goats will always make me laugh and I’ll always find this particular story extremely fascinating. Adapted by the smart screenwriter Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Frank, The Debt, Our Brand is Crisis) from the brilliant book by gonzo-journalist and musician Jon Ronson, the film was directed by Grant Heslov,…
Tonight’s major motion picture is Ron Shelton’s Tin Cup, which is one of my absolute favorite romantic films ever made. But it’s more than a great romance – it’s a great sports movie, it’s a terrific buddy film, and most importantly, it’s a wonderful piece about human beings and all their persistent foibles and inconsistencies,…
Tonight’s feature presentation is Ridley Scott’s Matchstick Men, which easily makes my personal top five from Scott, and now that it’s a Netflix streaming option, I hope more people check it out. The cinematic sleight of hand on display in this film is remarkable. It’s so stylish in a very subtle way; I love it…
Thank the movie gods that Bong Joon-ho is getting a chance to make movies, and that Netflix had the scratch to finance a $60 million art film that would never have been made at this level anywhere else. I don’t care how many theaters Netflix Originals have access to; that’s not my business, I don’t…
There’s no use denying it. We have no actor who could ever approximate late 70’s Clint Eastwood, no actress quite like Sandra Locke during that time period (she’s SUPER hot in this movie…), the action is forceful and brutal and nearly unrelenting once the narrative kicks into overdrive, while the undercurrent of rape that…
Face/Off unquestionably represents the one and only time that Hollywood really got out of the way of action maestro John Woo and allowed him to go for broke with a big-budget and play on an R-rated playground of his patented poetic ultra-violence. I saw this film twice during opening weekend back in the summer of…
It’s the Fourth of July. It’s hot outside. Go see a movie. Go see Edgar Wright’s exuberant and rip-roaring Baby Driver. It’s tons of fun, it opened strongly over its debut weekend, and it needs great word of mouth, so that studios take more chances with films outside of the various franchises and sequel-ready items…
Black Hawk Down, which was released in 2001 in the shadow of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. A tragic anti-war film that manages to celebrate the warrior spirit that only a select few possess while eschewing stodgy and needless politicizing, this film dared to look at a deeply compromised and misguided American military excursion with necessary…
