The Trainspotting soundtrack, one of the most influential albums of the ‘90s, belongs to the rare group of film soundtracks where the songs are the score. Director Danny Boyle found success with his first feature, 1994’s Shallow Grave, by supplementing the original score with pop tracks both...

Zaniness is in short supply these days. In this grim-dark universe directed by Zack Snyder that we’ve created for ourselves, any attempt to be a little bonkers should be recognized. Why can’t we go to the movies and see Wolverine and Xavier get into a Three Stooges-esque poke fight? Where are...

There are few purer forms of entertainment than monkeys, wanton destruction, and comically oversized objects. So when a team of visionary filmmakers led by Merian C. Cooper decided to combine the three in 1933, the cinematic world was never the same. Besides casually revolutionizing special...

Welcome back! Last time, we took a look at movies based on U.S. history from Columbus to the end of the 19th century, and boy did we have fun! But there’s still plenty of history to cover, so we better get back in the groove. And what better place to jump back in than what so many people...

There’s a scene about two-thirds into David Fincher’s Zodiac in which David Toschi, the San Francisco homicide detective played by Mark Ruffalo, walks out of a screening of Dirty Harry in disgust, bemoaning the fact that he hasn’t solved the Zodiac case and “they’re already making movies...

George Santayana isn’t a household name, but something he said is one of the best-known quotations in human history: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As a bit of a history buff, I’m a big fan of that quote, and I think it is, for the most part, very true. If...

Memoirs of an Invisible Man sounds like a lazy joke in a comedy about 1985 Hollywood. A nameless executive is airing his daily grievances to an even more nameless assistant. Remind me to get John Carpenter and Chevy Chase on the phone about that invisible man picture — if the effects guys can’t...

The success of M. Night Shyamalan’s mind-bending thriller Split has inspired the director to announce plans to make a sequel to Unbreakable — a film that, until last week, I’d spent more than 16 years avoiding. Why avoid Unbreakable? To properly contextualize, let’s go back to...

There are certain movies that filled my teen years. Some of these, like Sixteen Candles and The Lost Boys, are staples that have been passed on to the next generation. But one seems forever stuck between “forgotten” and “cult classic.” Every two years or so, someone will bring it up and a...

The loss of a creative voice often prompts a revisiting of their works. In January, William Peter Blatty, best known as author of The Exorcist, passed away. And while The Exorcist is certainly a film worthy of endless discussion, my favorite Blatty work is 1980’s The Ninth Configuration. Written...

The concert film is a subgenre in a state of continuous, radical change, mainly because of the music it strives to capture. Merely documenting a great stage-show or a searing lead performance can be accomplished by recording the set with a phone, but the energy locked into the time and place of...

We live in weird times. Wherever you are on the political spectrum, you probably agree that the world has seen better days. Some people find a silver lining in the fact that great art is often born in the wake of perilous times — take the paranoid thrillers that followed Watergate, for example...

Since he burst onto the independent film scene in 1994 with Clerks, profanity-prone writer/director Kevin Smith has more or less stayed on brand. With few exceptions, his films revolve around verbose slackers in varied states of arrested development – almost literally in the case of his debut’s...

In October 2013, I lost my battle with a liver disease known as PSC, primary sclerosing cholangitis. It causes the bile ducts to swell up, and sometimes swell shut, which turns the body into a giant clogged toilet. When that happens, your skin turns yellow and your eyes do a great impression of...

A few days ago, a picture from Will Smith’s upcoming film Bright surfaced. Smith is on set, smiling with a cop’s handlebar mustache and uniform with a medal draped over his chest. Next to him is a similarly-dressed being with mottled green-yellow skin and inhuman features. Yes, Smith’s new...