Tag Archive
Barbarosa
There’s a very valid reason for Mel Brooks not being particularly visible to the press during the production of two classics of the 1980s. His production company, Brooksfilms, was responsible for both David Lynch’s The Elephant Man and David Cronenberg’s The Fly, but Brooks went uncredited as an executive producer. If you knew that Brooks […]
The Adjustment Bureau/Unknown/The Eagle
In 2004, there was a surprisingly competent thriller released to theaters. Unfortunately it had a title that was not all that memorable, The Forgotten, and it was amidst a glut of “my child is missing” films, one of which also starred Julianne Moore, Freedomland. It had a premise that sounded familiar, Moore remembers her child, […]
Clash of the Titans (2010)
It’s not a secret that the goal of reputable porn filmmakers has been to make a movie that is both erotic and dramatically riveting. Since the early 70s, the heyday of well made pornography (which includes such titles as The Opening of Misty Beethoven and The Devil in Miss Jones), there have been a few […]
District 13: Ultimatum
On Conan O’Brien’s final show before he was forced off The Tonight Show, he said that people should try to avoid being cynical about life, as that was his least favorite emotion. It’s a noble gesture and it’s a nice thought that one can go through life believing people and not looking for ulterior motives. […]
From Paris With Love
There’s a scene in one of my favorite movies, Kicking and Screaming (the one about post-college ennui, not Will Ferrell screaming at pee-wee soccer players) where one character, Otis, responds to a challenge to name eight movies where a monkey plays a key role. After a few titles, the character, played by Carlos Jacott, starts […]
Five Minutes of Heaven
Period pieces always create a lot of problems for filmmakers, from the costumes, make-up, style of speech, and an overall look of the actors. It gets worse when the movie takes place in an era that the audience might have lived through. But when directors get bogged down in these small details, they often lose […]