In-depth reviews of my favorite movies of all time.
Spaghetti Westerns (Italian films from the 1960s and 70s set in the American West) are not my favorite Westerns. Ultraviolent, revisionist, grim affairs with nothing but bad towns and nihilistic worldviews, they are a far …
All-timer classic Hollywood director Howard Hawks LOVED to re-use elements from his movies. Whether it was to mine Bringing up Baby to produce the superior Man's Favorite Sport (yeah, superior, I said it!), or whether …
I’ve never been the biggest Sam Peckinpah fan. He’s just a little too revisionist, a little too obvious, and a little too over-reliant on slow-motion bloodbaths. While nothing will ever compare to peak pre-revisionist …
There are many movies "about" the creative process. Sometimes they can be indulgent ("key word here is 'indulgent'") self-referential films about making a film like Fellini's 8 1/2. Sometimes they can circle right …
The Fast and Furious franchise has evolved over the last two decades from a testosterone-soaked fetishization of small-scale street racing to a testosterone-soaked fetishization of the joys of punching torpedoes into tanks. And, while the …
Frank Capra, for all his talents, is a problematic director. He has directed some of my all-time favorite films, and yet he has also some of my all-time most hated films--and often the differences between …
There is a reason that Buster Keaton's films have aged better than any of his contemporaries. I'm not saying that there is anything remotely at fault with the work of Chaplin or Lloyd--it is just …
Today's post started while I was sitting around recently, just letting my mind wander. My thoughts were flitting around like a barracuda in a mangrove forest until, like a Ceti Eel, the words "I'd like to watch …
Before I get on to the business of explaining why Casablanca is one of my favorite movies, I do need to admit that I really don't like the ending, or, for that matter, the major …
Sometimes it's easy to justify enjoyment of certain kinds of films by simply calling them "dumb fun." However, films like Conan the Barbarian seem to push the limits of dumb fun almost into the realm of, …