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 tight close-ups of eyeballs and ears and other body parts, […]
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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 more: Sparkles, the giant plague-infested dog/cat/something-else hybrid who terrorizes 16th Century Korea […]
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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, Bruce Willis has a decent amount […]
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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” meme. Those zany performances […]
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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 characters. Klein introduces a troubled protagonist who turns […]
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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, Stanley Corkin writes in Starring New […]
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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 You—even a purist like Kenneth […]
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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 […]
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Several years ago, while parsing out my love for the films of the late, lamented Tony Scott, I came to a realization: I am a Crimson Tide guy, living in a Top Gun world. While the earlier film, a gorgeously shot and technically stunning action-drama about hotshot Navy fighter pilots, remains a major pop culture […]
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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 Ones The summer movie […]
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Proto-indie filmmaker Roger Corman once said, “Motion pictures are the art form of the 20th century, and one of the reasons is the fact that films are a slightly corrupted artform. They fit this century – they combine art and business!” Not the most romantic sentiment from the Pit and the Pendulum director, but the […]
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How to Build a Girl is … a lot. You have American actress Beanie Feldstein doing a Midlands accent with her Manic Panic red curls spilling out of a top hat, all while talking to pictures of Sigmund Freud, Jo March, and Donna Summer — who talk back. It’s not subtle, but How to Build a […]
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