Sid and Nancy: Criterion Collection
September 9, 2017
Amidst the chaos and confusion of the British punk rock scene in the late 1970s, the Sex Pistols emerged as the most notorious band to come out of that period. It seems like they couldn’t make a move without courting controversy. The band dynamic was...
The New World: Criterion Collection
July 28, 2016
After completing The Thin Red Line (1998), filmmaker Terrence Malick began working on a film about Che Guevara and his failed revolution in Bolivia (that was eventually made by Steven Soderbergh) but after financing fell through he was offered The New...
Parkland
November 19, 2013
Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) reignited the American public’s fascination with the John F. Kennedy assassination, spawning several other films that took a look at either the peripheral figures involved (Ruby) or its impact on society (Love Field). In...
8 Movie Collection: Star-Studded Drama
February 6, 2013
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...
Carlos: Criterion Collection
October 3, 2011
Notorious international terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal came to prominence in the 1970’s and 1980’s with several politically-motivated bombings, kidnappings and hijackings in Europe and the Middle East. He eventually became...
Patty Hearst
May 27, 2011
Coming off the commercial and critical failure that was Light of Day (1987), Paul Schrader went on to direct Patty Hearst (1988), a low budget docudrama about the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in 1974. Based on...
William & Kate: The Movie
May 3, 2011
In November 2010, Prince William, second in line to the English throne behind his father, the Prince of Wales, and son of the laudable sadly deceased Princess Diana, announced his engagement to Catherine Middleton. They met when both were undergraduates...
Topsy-Turvy: Criterion Collection
March 31, 2011
You have to hand it to Mike Leigh, a filmmaker who has the confidence to make a $20 million period musical with limited commercial appeal. In 1999, he released Topsy-Turvy, a musical drama chronicling W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s creation of The...
Secretariat
January 18, 2011
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,...
Cher: The Film Collection
November 22, 2010
Here’s a film that I bet William Friedkin would like to forget. At a time when popular musical acts like The Beatles and The Monkees were starring in movie musicals, Sonny and Cher decided to cash in on the trend too with Good Times (1967). Bored between...
