Tag Archive
Roadracers
Whenever there’s a genre parody or ode to a specific era of films, such as Black Dynamite’s mocking of Blaxploitation films or Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the second half of Grindhouse, the danger is that the film might fall into the trap of either being condescending without any particular insight, or so faithful that it […]
Skatetown, U.S.A.
Categorizing a movie as a time capsule reduces it to a simple evocation of a specific time and nothing else. William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. is drenched in 1985, a Wang Chung score, rampant androgyny, ridiculous car chases, cheerful amorality, and a cynical fetishism that seems modeled on Miami Vice, which debuted […]
Physical Evidence
On the recently deceased website JumptheShark.com,* it was decided that adding Ted McGinley to a TV show was the death knell, the very moment that the show would take a downturn, never to recover.(examples include Happy Days, Dynasty, and The Love Boat). In the case of the routine Burt Reynolds vehicle, Physical Evidence, he is […]