Being John Malkovich: Criterion Collection

Being John Malkovich (1999) heralded the arrival of not one but two unique voices in cinema: screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze. Both came from fairly modest origins, the former cutting his teeth writing for several television sitcoms... 

Secretariat

After failing to win an Academy Award in 2002 for her brave performance in Unfaithful (losing out to Nicole Kidman in The Hours), cynical pundits surmised that Diane Lane took on the role of Penny Chenery, the owner of the legendary race horse Secretariat,... 

Burn After Reading

As they did with Fargo (1996), the Coen brothers followed up the Academy Award-winning crime thriller No Country For Old Men (2007) with a comedy, in this case Burn After Reading (2008), a farce set in Washington, D.C. The Coens have adhered to the pattern... 

Beowulf: Unrated Director’s Cut

After leaving behind live-action motion pictures for the computer-animated adaptation of The Polar Express (2004), Robert Zemeckis utilized the same technology for another adaptation – Beowulf (2007). With the help of author Neil Gaiman and screenwriter... 

Color Me Kubrick: A True…ish Story

Based loosely on an actual scam perpetuated by a man named Alan Conway, who passed himself off as filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, Color Me Kubrick (2005) is a cheeky farce that attempts to address the nature of fame a la King of Comedy (1983) – just not... 

Art School Confidential

Daniel Clowes made the successful transition from the comic book page to the big screen with an adaptation of his graphic novel Ghost World in 2000. It was an excellent example of all the right elements coming together at the right time. Clowes is back... 

Con Air: Unrated Extended Edition

By all rights Con Air (1997) should have been an awful waste of time, just another tired Jerry Bruckheimer testosterone action film whose final resting fate should be wedged between beer and pick-up truck ads on television Instead; the film brilliantly... 

Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter

This project started as a proposed album of opera singers performing the songs of Cole Porter by a former teacher turned entertainment lawyer John Carlin. Motivated by the many deaths of friends from AIDS, he decided to make the album a vehicle for a... 

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Imagine being a floppy Englishman who wakes one morning to find his house ready to be demolished by a wrecking crew. Imagine, a scant few minutes later, your best friend pulling you down to the pub—then telling you the world will end in 11 minutes.... 

Mulholland Falls

They say timing is everything and this certainly applies to the release and reception of movies. Case in point: Mulholland Falls (1996). Released a year before the very similar L.A. Confidential (1997), Falls was also a retro-noir set in 1950s Los Angeles...