When the semi-annual conversation on female buddy movies resurfaces, there are usual suspects. Thelma and Louise. B.A.P.S. Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion. Steel Magnolias. One film that doesn’t show up in the conversation nearly as much as it should  is the French masterpiece Céline...

The 1990s were a strange time for filmmakers attempting to understand the Internet. As the technology went mainstream, with more families securing their own connections to the World Wide Web at home and schools adapting their curriculum to include more computer instruction, cinema responded. There...

Paramount’s decision to sell The Lovebirds directly to Netflix in the wake of theater closings may seem like a real bummer at first glance, but it’s actually a blessing in disguise. The romantic comedy, starring Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani and directed by Michael Showalter, undeniably plays...

In 1998, Stanley Kubrick accepted the D.W. Griffith Award from the Director’s Guild of America. In his acceptance speech, he compared Griffith to the Grecian myth of Icarus. Like Icarus, Griffith flew too close to the sun, but instead of his wax-and-feather wings melting, Griffith was shunned by...

When Grand Central Publishing released a new edition of the novel First Blood in 2000, author David Morrell penned an introduction, attempting to bridge the gap between the character he wrote in the early 1970s and the version of that character that had been lodged into pop consciousness by (at...

The Trip To Greece is to be the final of Michael Winterbottom's faux-documentary travel series, which partners Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon for a scenic tour of luxurious restaurants in enviable locales. And thank God, because after four "Trips" the magic is gone. In 2010, The Trip was an...

John Frankenheimer’s 1966 thriller Seconds is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of their Saul Bass centennial,and his distinctive opening title sequences, and good golly Miss Molly, Saul is putting in work from frame one here. The images are smeary and distorted, disturbingly...

The world of creature features has its own rogue’s gallery of beloved destruction generators. There’s Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Gamera, the Pacific Rim Kaiju... they’re practically their own wing of a fictional creature zoo. South Korea’s Monstrum, now streaming on Shudder, adds one...

Bruce Willis, Scott Adkins, and a killer shark make for a direct-to-video all-star line-up in this month’s look at movies on the margins of the ever-busy VOD and streaming release schedule. Survive the Night (VOD May 22) Compared to most of the direct-to-video work he churns out every year,...

Nicolas Cage has commanded the screen, for better or worse, for nearly 40 years. The Oscar winner has delivered brilliant, subtle performances in movies like Joe, Adaptation, and Bringing Out the Dead, but  the majority of his work is tied to being the man behind the “Oh no, not the bees”...

An artsier version of what might have been a network TV movie in the 1980s, writer-director Joey Klein’s addiction drama Castle in the Ground takes on the opioid epidemic with grim-faced seriousness and occasional poignancy, but can’t keep its focus on the emotional lives of its main...

The Harlem-set blaxploitation movies of the 1970s – films like Super Fly, Black Caesar, and Hell Up in Harlem – share a specific verbal language, and few of its cornerstones were as recognizable as the high, wide aerial shots that typically opened them. This imagery served a specific purpose,...

The Shakespeare adaptations of the 1990s and early 2000s are unified by an excess of style, and by a series of big risks. The nightmarish bleakness of Julie Taymor’s Titus, the MTV surrealism of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, the earnest romanticism of Gil Junger’s 10 Things I Hate About...

The days may be blending into each other, but the seasons, at least, are starting to show significant change. Spring is here, with the start of summer soon to follow. Even if you’re still spending most of your time at home, spring has both a sense of promise to it, and a feeling of change...

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date.—Wm. Shakespeare Boogaloo Shrimp and pogo sticksMy mind takes me back there oh so quickLet you off the hook like my man Mr. LimpetThink about that summer and I bug 'cause I miss it—Lyte Funkie...