It was one of Walt Disney’s great disappointments that Fantasia (1940) under-performed during its original release, and when it did find an audience, in the 1960s, it probably wasn’t the one Walt would have imagined: people on drugs. Critic Danny Peary documented this strange phenomenon in...

“You only get one shot. Do not miss your chance to blow – this opportunity comes once in a lifetime.” — Eminem Throughout film history, musicians and athletes have put their celebrity to use as actors to varying degrees of success. Some of these stars (Queen Latifah, Justin Timberlake,...

Last year, on Halloween, I read the first reports about a Mandarin duck inexplicably appearing in Central Park. Flaming orange frills over a dark plum breast, brushed stripes of black and white feathers, forest green, royal blue, and auburn tufts slicked back into a mohawk at the top of his head...

Like most self-absorbed teenage boys, my perspective on love in 2012 was complicated, to say the least. I was unattractive even by 14-year-old standards, I hadn’t had my first kiss, and every show or movie I got my hands on was about a nerdy guy with a beautiful girl. I felt like the story I had...

1999 is considered one of the strongest years of cinema in living memory. There will no doubt be countless articles in 2019 marking the 20th anniversaries of that year’s greatest hits and examining their impact and legacy. But this column isn’t about those movies. This column is about the...

No one could ever mistake a Jay Ward cartoon for being serious, not that they pandered to the preschool cheap seats either. Oh yes, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, The Dudley Do-Right Show, and George of the Jungle had animated safes falling on animated heads and enough puns to violate the Geneva...

The only time I actually met Albert Finney, I was wearing an enormous cartwheel hat and chalk-white face paint and he was being propositioned by a stripper. Full disclosure, we were on the set of the period film Washington Square (1997); it was my first time working on a movie. I’d bluffed my...

How could anyone even suggest making a sequel to The Fly? David Cronenberg’s 1986 sci-fi/horror remake of the 1958 classic is a stone-cold masterpiece. It’s arguably the greatest horror film of the ‘80s and the director’s personal best cinematic offering. When The Fly II hit theaters on...

On the whole, movie trailers haven’t had narrators for over a decade. They’ve been replaced by overbearing musical scores, ominous cover versions of pop songs, or some combination of the two, along with snippets of dialogue from the movie’s characters. Just a few decades ago, however, the...

Ring rubber bells, beat cotton gongs, strike silken cymbals, play leathern flutes. The cats and cans and you and I and all such things with souls, We shall hear: “Walter Paisley is born.” And the souls become flesh. Walter Paisley is born! Gremlins This is how Walter Paisley, the...

Indie jack-of-all-trades Mark Duplass’ roots in the mumblecore film movement have given him a strong base for understanding how to capture the ups and downs of human relationships. His writing on films such as The Puffy Chair (2005), Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011), and Blue Jay (2016) all focus...

For the second year, Turner Classic Movies’ weekly trip to Noir Alley – hosted by Eddie Muller, founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation – is taking February off for the channel’s “31 Days of Oscar,” when all it airs are films that won or were nominated for Academy Awards. But...

When actor Bob Balaban was gathering a crew for his directorial debut, Parents, a would-be applicant walked in and said, “I don’t really want to do this with you, I just came in to tell you you’re evil.”  That’s great press for any horror movie, but especially for the first feature...

For most viewers, cult director John Waters' movies are synonymous with transvestism, “bad taste” humor, and toxic American kitsch. But the Baltimore auteur has explored various political, sociological, and psychological themes in his movies over the course of his half-century career (his first...

1999 is considered one of the strongest years of cinema in living memory. There will no doubt be countless articles in 2019 marking the 20th anniversaries of that year's greatest hits and examining their impact and legacy. But this column isn’t about those movies. This column is about the...