Below you'll find a list of all posts from February, 2018
Throughout the ages, one question continues to haunt moviegoers everywhere… dogging their waking hours, haunting their sleep and likely staying with them to their graves: “BLANE instead of Duckie?!” Pretty in Pink opened today in 1985. Elsewhere, those of us — and there are quite a few — who have grown tired of Johnny Depp’s shtick over the years can …
Roman Polanski scored one of his later hits with Frantic, a brilliant little Hitchcockian number about a doctor (Harrison Ford) whose wife mysteriously vanishes on a business trip to Paris. Though not quite on the level of his very best films, it’s still a tight expertly crafted thriller with Ford delivering one of the best performances of his career. It opened …
As we get closer to the Oscars, we come smack dab against one of the comparatively few Best Picture winners that has actually stood the test of time. It Happened One Night, Frank Capra’s romp of a romantic comedy, opened today in 1934. 80+ years later, it’s just as fun, charming and utterly irresistible as it’s always been, thanks both …
Do you want the awesome first, or just the freakishly pathetic? Right, awesome it is. The Incredible Shrinking Man opened today in 1957, marking a high point of 1950s science fiction. The effects were astonishing at the time and still hold up quite well, while the script by Richard Matheson (based on his own novel) manages to fit existential questioning …
I confess a soft spot for Clive Barker’s Nightbreed, a strange and marvelous little horror film that puts Barker’s talents for the weird and unusual on full display. A tale of beautiful monsters and evil men, it features (among other things) a surprisingly good performance from fellow horror director David Cronenberg as (what else?) a crazed serial killer. It opened today …
We’ve got a terrific pair of musicals on this Valentine’s Eve, starting with Bob Fosse’s triumphant Cabaret. Besides proving a monstrous hit and going toe to toe with The Godfather itself at the Oscars that year, its depiction of Germany in the waning days of the Weimar Republic feels more pertinent than ever. It opened today in 1972, and remains on the short …
A fairly quiet day for movie releases, marked by a remarkably unremarkable Western. Cimarron, a turgid tale of the Oklahoma land rush and the various soap opera theatrics that which followed, opened today in 1931. It’s interesting mainly because it was released before the Hays Code, which means it’s reasonably steamy for its era, and it succeeded in walking off with …
(Welcome to Movies for the Resistance, a weekly column intended to showcase films with particular pertinence for 2017. One of the fundamental purposes of art in general, and movies in particular, is to serve as a spiritual armory: bringing hope, timely lessons and shared experiences when times are dark. They can move us to positive political action, lend insight to the inexplicable, …
My wife and I have both been diagnosed with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), and as film lovers we’ve been fascinated with depictions of Autism in the movies and the way certain movies and characters resonate with Autistic audience members. “Autie or Ain’t He” is a new recurring column that will be appearing here on the first of every month (more …