Heaven’s Gate: Criterion Collection
December 19, 2012
With Heaven’s Gate (1980), Michael Cimino made the classic risky gamble that many ambitious filmmakers make. Still flush from the commercial and critical success of The Deer Hunter (1978), he used all of his newfound clout to make an epic tale depicting...
Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997
February 13, 2006
Most people forget that Batman (1989) was the first quality comic book adaptation since Superman (1978) because nobody had taken them seriously or bothered to be faithful to the original source material for quite some time. At first, when fans heard who...
Around the Bend
August 31, 2005
Around the Bend (2004) is one of those character-driven, independent films that desperately wants to evoke the hey-day of American cinema in the ‘70s but comes up too short because it fails to transcend its contrived premise. It’s a shame because...
The Stepford Wives
June 20, 2005
Even if you’ve never seen the original 1974 movie about a young couple who move to a neighbourhood populated by perfect housewives, chances are you will have heard the term ‘Stepford Wife’. And perhaps it’s this enduring mythology...
Man on Fire
March 18, 2005
Tony Scott is a journeyman action film director capable of producing an excellent film when given the right material (True Romance) and truly abysmal ones when given the wrong material (The Fan). Either way, his films all have a distinctive look of a...
Welcome to the Jungle
June 17, 2004
When a film changes titles from its production, to its release, you don’t think too much about it. Working titles are common, it happens. However, when a film changes title from its American release to its UK release, that’s a bad sign. It means the...
True Romance Director’s Cut
December 11, 2003
Originally this was to be Tarantino’s directorial debut, but as it turned out it was Tony Scott who used the film to prove to the world that his success with Top Gun was not just a fluke and that he is more than just Ridley’s younger brother....
True Romance
November 18, 2003
In the early nineties director Tony Scott was given two scripts to read by a young new screenwriter, one of them was True Romance and according to Scott it was “one of the fullest and most accomplished scripts that I’d ever read”. Jump...
The Work of Director Spike Jonze
February 1, 2002
Chances are that even if you don’t recognize the name Spike Jonze, you’ve probably seen one of his music videos. He is responsible for some of the most memorable videos since the creation of the medium and has worked with an eclectic roster of bands...
