Every year at least one good horror hits theaters. By good, I mean it actually gives me a few scares and I go recommend it to fellow fright aficionados.
Every year at least one good horror hits theaters. By good, I mean it actually gives me a few scares and I go recommend it to fellow fright aficionados.
Did I ever say anything in a previous column about how good the 2014 summer movie season was going to be? I’m not going back to check. You can look for me. If I did, then you’re more than welcome to ask me if I was momentarily poisoned by Aristocrat and allergy medication that day.
The abrupt, shocking death of Robin Williams, which appears to be a suicide, is a harsh, cruel reminder of what mental illness is capable of. Robin Williams will be remembered as one of the greatest comedians of the past thirty, forty years. He won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1997, in addition to either winning or being nominated for a host of Golden Globes, Emmys, Grammys, and countless other accolades.
I haven’t seen the miniseries remake of Rosemary’s Baby. I have no idea what other people thought of it, but I’m at least curious. Same with the miniseries remake of Bonnie and Clyde(although calling that a remake is a dodgy concept to embrace). There’s not a frantic need running through my heart’s deepest desires to see them, but I’m still interested on some vague, “How bad did they fuck it up?” kind of level.
In the week following the release of the film Star Trek Into Darkness, I wrote a long essay comparing and contrasting the two Star Trek IIs. My thesis was that, compared to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek Into Darkness was a study in experience over engagement and was ultimately meaningless and forgettable.
Sergio Leone made small, gritty films, but he also had vision enough to make a number of epics. Of those epics, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is his best known. It’s largely remembered now for two things: Clint Eastwood (or at least his wardrobe) and Ennio Morricone’s iconic score. That song plays along the film’s bloody, breathless opening credits sequence. That song gets you ready for a sweeping, ugly, funny, and violent story of three men and their interactions with each other over a matter of buried confederate gold.
In 1994, Steve James directed a documentary calledHoop Dreams, which followed two young boys and their hopes to escape their gang-infested Chicago neighborhood through basketball. Today it is widely regarded as one of the greatest films—of any genre—ever made, a reputation it owes, in large part, to film critic Roger Ebert. Ebert championed the film from the beginning, calling it, “one of the best films about American life that I have ever seen”, and selecting it not only as the best film of that year, but of the entire decade. Now, twenty years later, James has a unique chance to return the favor, with Life Itself, an elegant documentary portrait of Ebert, a year after his death.
After I finished watching Her, I was fucking pissed. Okay, that sounds a little misleading. That sounds like I hated Spike Jonze’s story of a deeply lonely man who begins a relationship with a female OS, but I didn’t. I loved every single moment. It was a complex story brought to life with well-balanced portions of humor, satire, and sadness. It brought out the best in its cast, particularly Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson (using nothing but her voice), and Amy Adams. It might be the best thing Spike Jonze has done up to this point.
The first audio commentary I ever listened to was for Clerks. IFC ran the movie frequently when I was in high school, but they decided to do something different one weekend. They were going to show the film with commentary (the one Smith and several people involved with the film had recorded in 1995), deleted scenes, and even the Soul Asylum music video “Can’t Even Tell.” In other words, it was pretty much everything that existed on the original DVD release of the movie.
Panhandle Jim, Scott Honea's latest short film.