8 Movie Collection: Star-Studded Drama

With All the Pretty Horses (2000), director Billy Bob Thornton set out to make a Heaven’s Gate (1980) for the new millennium by adapting Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name. However, movie studio executives took the film away from him and recut... 

Blow Out: Criterion Collection

Time has been kind to Brian De Palma and his films. When he rose to prominence and made some of his most memorable films in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the director was criticized for making schlocky horror films (The Fury) and, most damning... 

The Thin Red Line: Criterion Collection

After Terrence Malick made Days of Heaven in the late 1970s, he didn’t make another film for two decades. Because he shunned the press like the cinematic equivalent of Thomas Pynchon, speculation was rampant as to the reasons why. It was rumored that... 

Saturday Night Fever: 30th Anniversary Edition

Saturday Night Fever (1977) turns 30 this year and has become firmly entrenched as a popular culture icon. It is one of those rare films that tapped into the zeitgeist of its time, brought disco into the mainstream, transformed its star, John Travolta,... 

Face/Off: Special Collector’s Edition

It took two Hollywood films (Hard Target and Broken Arrow) before John Woo was allowed to cut loose with his trademark style on Face/Off (1997). The result was his most commercially and critically successful American film at that point in his career.... 

Welcome Back, Kotter: Season 1

Ah, simpler times. Watching the first season of Welcome Back, Kotter and hearing the strains of John Sebastian’s theme music after all these years, takes one back to a time when John Travolta was just starting out (before Grease and Saturday Night Fever... 

Grease: Rockin’ Rydell Edition

In the late 1970s and early 1980s (culminating with the box office flop of Streets of Fire in 1984), 1950s culture was all the rage and leading this revival was the movie adaptation of the popular Broadway musical Grease (1978). John Travolta’s career... 

Be Cool

After the success of Get Shorty (1995) as a novel and a film, Elmore Leonard wrote a sequel entitled Be Cool with the notion of it being turned into a film as well (his books read almost like screenplays anyway). It has and with the hope of lightning... 

Ladder 49

The fact that Ladder 49 (2004) celebrates firefighters is admirable in and of itself but it unfortunately portrays them in such a simplistic way that Ron Howard’s Backdraft (1991) seems like the epitome of moral complexity by comparison. You know you’re... 

Get Shorty: Collector’s Edition

After Pulp Fiction (1994), John Travolta could do anything he wanted. Quentin Tarantino told him to do Get Shorty (1995) even after the actor passed on it several times. QT was a big fan of Elmore Leonard’s novels and knew that the actor’s talents...