The ‘oughts were a pretty great decade for cinema–in both the art houses and the popcorn multiplex fluff. We had the debut of some new franchises (The Bourne films, the Lord of the Rings flicks, and comic books like Spider-Man, X-Men and Iron Man) and the reboot of some old (like Daniel Craig’s blond, gritty … Continue Reading
Browsing Category: cinematic gems
Last night, the wife and I decided to watch Stakeout. She’d never seen it, and it had been a while for me. I knew it had been a big hit when it came out, and a little research unearthed that it was the 8th highest grossing movie at the box office in 1987. Looking at … Continue Reading
The TV Set, Jake (son of Lawrence) Kasdan’s 2006 pitch-perfect satire of network television, is a biting, funny, clever spiral into the madness of pilot production. The film stars a sublime David Duchovny as writer Mike Klein, who is in high spirits as the pilot he penned is about to enter into production. An intensely … Continue Reading
One of the best teen romcoms of the ’80s, The Sure Thing is one of those special movies that gets better with age. Director Rob Reiner has a light touch with comedy that serves the story splendidly here–it follows Walter ‘Gib’ Gibson (John Cusack, at his charming best), a freshman at an East Coast college, … Continue Reading
I’m a sucker for a good western, especially a character-driven one. Such is the case with 2006′s Seraphim Falls, an enthralling, brutal story of revenge and personal limits that failed to find much of an audience, even on DVD. Shortly after the Civil War, Confederate Colonel Morsman Carver (Liam Neeson, in an intense, brooding and … Continue Reading
John Frankenheimer was one of our best directors, having helmed classics like The Manchurian Candidate, The Train, Seven Days in May, Ronin, The Young Savages, and The Birdman of Alcatraz. One of his greatest overlooked triumphs is 1966′s Seconds, a fascinating, eerie, depressing mindfuck (and trust me, that term is oh-so-apt here). The film follows … Continue Reading
The Long Goodbye, Robert Altman’s 1973 take on Raymond Chandler’s most popular creation, Philip Marlowe, is a brilliant, darkly funny detective tale. Elliot Gould gives a sly, hangdog performance as the title sleuth, who is thrust into a murder-mystery involving his best friend Terry (former Yankees hurler Jim Bouton), an alcoholic writer (Sterling Hayden, delightful … Continue Reading
A stylish, engrossing and perfectly-paced French thriller, Tell No One is about to get it’s inevitable Hollywood reworking (Miramax is at the helm) and probable butchering. So take this opportunity now to add it to your Netflix queues and see one of the best films of the last few years. Based on the novel by … Continue Reading
It would be easy to pick several of the films by director Sidney Lumet as cinematic gems–outside of the obvious choices of Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Serpico, and 12 Angry Men, there’s powerhouse films like Night Falls on Manhattan, Prince of the City and the recent Before the Devil Knows Your Dead. Some of the … Continue Reading
Gregory Peck gives one of his best and most complex performances in the 1965 amnesia thriller Mirage, a Hitchcockian mind-tease penned by Peter Stone (Charade, The Taking of Pelham 123). Peck portrays David Stillwell, who finds himself in a dark stairway corridor, unable to remember a thing–and his inability to know who he really is … Continue Reading
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