The key to dystopian science fiction is to make their bleak future plausible, which is why stories like 1984 resonate even after the precise future date they utilize has come and gone. John Carpenter pulled off a similar trick with Escape from New York, turning Manhattan Island into a walled maximum security prison controlled by a future police state. When Air Force …
Today in Movie History: June 12
It’s a big day for movie releases today, but there’s no doubt which one leads the list. Action and adventure have been a part of the movies since the Lumiere brothers sent audiences diving for cover with the approach of a moving train. We’ve seen some amazing entries in the genre over the ensuing 120 years, but none of them …
Today in Movie History: May 21
Of all the films on Mel Gibson’s resume, The Road Warrior is the one that causes me the most pain. It arrived in the much ballyhooed summer of 1982 like a thunderbolt: upping the ante on director George Miller’s post-apocalyptic Mad Max and delivering one of the greatest science fiction movies ever made in the process. Pity Gibson’s Antisemitism has made watching …
Today in Movie History: April 12
On the list of great directors whom the Academy shafted, Alfred Hitchcock is pretty high. The only film of his that won Best Picture was Rebecca, a solid though hardly groundbreaking slice of Gothic based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier. Hitch didn’t even win Best Director that year — it went to John Ford for The Grapes of Wrath — and he …
Today in Movie History: August 4
Then someone said, “hey, let’s do a movie about a talking pig in a barnyard who doesn’t want to get turned into pork chops. Not, not Charlotte’s Web, but close. And it will be wise and delightful and poignant, and it will make us all love James Cromwell until the day we die.” That man was director Chris Noonan (with …
Movies for the Resistance: Mad Max — Fury Road
(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 …
Mad Max: Fury Road Movie Review
It’s strange to see Mad Max returning to the big screen at the same time that his descendents are claiming absolute box office supremacy. Stranger still to see him prove once again who still runs Bartertown. The Furious movies were supposed to be his heir apparent, lending a cartoonish sheen to vehicular mayhem that picks up the slack left behind …