Escape from Tomorrow is a work of cinematic madness. This willfully deranged little freak-out was written and directed by Randy Moore, and because this was his debut feature, the film feels even more radical than if a more seasoned filmmaker had attempted something similar. The narrative pivots on a recently unemployed father (Roy Abramsohn, totally…
Jim Jarmusch’s low-key and elegant film Paterson is another feather in the cap for this idiosyncratic auteur, starring an intensely committed Adam Driver as a New Jersey bus driver named Paterson, who happens to live in the city of Paterson. The film is part fantasy, part meditation, and all wonderful, with an observant eye for…
I was 11 years old when my father took me to see James Cameron’s masterpiece Terminator 2: Judgment Day on the big screen over the Fourth of July weekend. This was not just “seeing a movie,” but rather, this particular cinematic experience was a true mind-blower, and over the years, I’ve returned to this seminal…
Obviously not the greatest movie ever made by legendary filmmaker John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, Ronin), I still can’t help but be fascinated by the comic-book-inspired insanity of his odd-ball curiosity 99 and 44/100% Dead. Released in 1974 and starring Richard Harris as a love-struck hit-man caught in the middle of an escalating gang war,…
Bitter, subversive, and violently fierce all throughout its super-lean 80 minute running time, Doug Liman’s Iraq war thriller The Wall operates as both a minimalist genre exercise ala Phone Booth and Buried, while angrily commenting on American foreign military involvement. And it serves as a reminder that Liman, who certainly got bit by the blockbuster…
Next up on Did You Have Any Idea This Was Made And Released? is the confident and excellent 50’s-set drama Indignation, from producer/writer/scholar James Schamus, who made his directorial debut with this adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel of the same name. Schamus has, for the last 20 years, been Ang Lee’s main creative collaborator, and…
Released in 1960, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment stands as one of the filmmaker’s greatest works, a motion picture written with intelligence, directed with style, and preformed with vitality by its splendid cast, which included Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, David Lewis, Willard Waterman, David White, Edie Adams, Hope Holiday, and Jack Kruschen….
Director Oden Roberts (Cannes Golden Lion winner 2012), draws on his own experiences of being recruited by the Army in High School, allowing us a look behind the curtain of the controversial recruiting practices of the US Army post 9/11. Driven by powerhouse performances from Lew Temple and Clayne Crawford, A Fighting Season really shines…
One of the only CGI-dominated franchises that I personally care about at the moment, the recent rebooting of Planet of the Apes has been spectacular, with both films delivering supreme, photo-real visual effects and narratives that feel topical and human and never anything more than they have to be. This summer’s upcoming War for the…
A former youth boxing champion, Jimmy McCabe (Johnny Harris), is a man desperately in search of hope, but looking in all the wrong places. When he hits rock bottom he turns to his childhood boxing club and the only family he has left: gym owner Bill (Ray Winstone) cornerman Eddie (Michael Smiley)…
I’m not sure where we’d be in the film world right now without the erudite efforts of companies A24 and Annapurna Pictures. These two production and distribution entities have been responsible for the lion’s share of truly excellent cinema over the last 10 years, and added to that list is the film 20th Century Women,…
I really enjoy documentaries about movies that never came to be, stuff like The Life and Death of Superman Returns and Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau. And similar to those poignantly enjoyable ruminations on films that never came to pass, Jodorowsky’s Dune, from director Frank Pavich, is a…
Peter Weir’s career is a unique one; I can think of few other filmmakers who have made as many great films as he has to then just become forgotten about by the studios. Granted, he’s not likely interested in the CGI-driven idiocy that has come to dominate the mass movie market, but it’s sad to…
The Palestinian film Omar, which was released in 2013, is an incredibly lean and disciplined political thriller that ticks like a fine-tuned clock on a narrative level, and offers up riveting thrills when it comes to its action bits. Director Hany Abu-Assad packs a serious punch into his film, which mixes romance and sociopolitical observations…
The average Star Wars fan has spent a whopping £800 on the movie franchise according to new research. A nice little story fitting of the day it’s written on as self proclaimed superfans also admit to spending upwards of £2000 (including toys, DVDs and conventions) on their beloved franchise. Cinema tickets are the biggest expenditure…
The horror genre is my least traveled and I’m certainly no big fan of zombie narratives (my favorite is easily Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead) but WOW and WOW, the South Korean film Train to Busan is completely insane and amazing and unrelenting in its awesomeness. What’s also excellent about the film is that…
