Laws of Gravity
June 23, 2011
Nick Gomez’s Laws of Gravity (1992) was part of an exciting crop of American independent films to come out in the early to mid-1990’s and arguably the best of the Mean Streets (1973) wannabes to be made. It also featured a cast of young, up and coming...
Pale Flower: Criterion Collection
June 13, 2011
Masahiro Shinoda is considered to be one of the filmmakers that pioneered the Japanese New Wave of cinema and with Pale Flower (1964) he created a moody film noir, a story of a doomed love affair between two gambling junkies. Shonda got his start as an...
Defiance
June 6, 2011
Defiance (1980) is an early Jerry Bruckheimer production, back when he was interested in making gritty crime films like American Gigolo (1980) and Thief (1981). Unfortunately, Defiance was given a limited released where it promptly bombed at the box office...
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...
Diabolique: Criterion Collection
May 26, 2011
Diabolique (1955) was director Henri-Georges Clouzot’s seventh film and saw him at the apex of his critical and commercial success in France. It was the second part of a cinematic one-two punch that included The Wages of Fear (1953) and established...
Platoon: 25th Anniversary
May 24, 2011
While Platoon (1986) was certainly not the first film about the Vietnam War, it was one of the first to focus on the average foot soldier in an honest and authentic way. Oliver Stone’s film really put you in the jungle with these guys as only someone...
The Tourist
May 18, 2011
Not since Bruce Willis turning out to be a ghost in The Sixth Sense have I seen a film with quite as obvious a plot twist as The Tourist. In the Sixth Sense we had a film marketed on a plot twist about a boy who can see and talk to ghosts, then, in the...
Daydream Nation
May 12, 2011
Daydream Nation (2010) marks the directorial debut of Michael Goldbach and he certainly wears his influences on his sleeve as he evokes television shows like Twin Peaks, other films like Juno (2007), and musical groups like Sonic Youth. It all adds up...
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...
The Ambulance
April 28, 2011
Eric Roberts has had an odd career that never reached its full potential. In the early 1980’s, he was part of an exciting generation of up and coming actors that included the likes of Mickey Rourke, Sean Penn and Gary Oldman, and delivered intense,...
