I love film noir, a genre that only became a genre after the fact.  Before French critics coined the term, noir was simply “crime” pictures, usually the lower-budget second feature on a double-bill (or the “B-movie”).  So, while I may prefer to watch a movie of this type before randomly choosing one from most other […]

Pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone can be beneficial.  I have always said how much I hate musicals.  The more I thought about it, I realized I not only liked some movies with numerous musical sequences (i.e. the Marx Brothers’ Universal films) but I even liked some musical numbers, such as “On The Atchison, […]

At this time, I own over 3000 blu-ray discs and God only knows how many DVDs.  Managing this large number of titles requires rental of a storage unit.  I imagine most people, especially those who only stream media, would wonder why I would go through this effort for physical media.  One reason is because of […]

“Cute” used to be a word I used only in the pejorative. It would be very easy to dismiss this Spielberg-produced movie.  Of course it would be Spielberg (80’s Spielberg, no less) in that the elderly, eclectic and/or eccentric tenants are about to lose their ancient apartment building to an evil developer, only to have […]

The other day, I heard an announcement on XM radio saying Belinda Carlisle had a recurring show where she was spinning LA punk from the late 70s and early 80s.  When they mentioned Carlisle, I first thought of her career as an adult contemporary pop singer, and I thought that was an unusual choice to […]

In a perfect world, Roy Scheider would have been allowed to make exactly one movie in the 70s and 80s where he co-stars with a shark, and then he would have had to spend the rest of that era in thrillers set in New York City. There is something about Scheider that radiates urbane sophistication […]

It seems that every director with a distinctive, challenging style eventually reigns in their impulses and makes a more conventional feature for a major studio.  Not too long after David Lynch surprised everybody with The Elephant Man, David Cronenberg made the Stephen King adaptation The Dead Zone.  How strange to think both directors also turned down the […]

Prior to finally seeing this movie, the full extent of what I knew about it was this exchange in The Fisher King: Customer [looking in shock at cover of videotape]: “Ordinary Peepholes?” Clerk: “It’s a big-titty, spread-cheeky kind of thing” It turns out Ordinary People isn’t a big-titty, spread-cheeky kind of thing, but the Best […]

“You’ve told me this story before” That line is spoken by the 20-something arm candy of Peter Fonda’s character.  “But I don’t mind if you tell it to me again.” This is a pretty apt summary of my feelings about The Limey, Steven Soderbergh’s 1999 movie that shows us a story we seen in many […]

A Lars von Trier musical starring Bjork. Let’s parse that summary to show why Dancer In The Dark should be approached with some trepidation.  If there is one thing I can say about the entirety of von Trier’s filmography, that would be it is provocative. Other than that, there are few consistencies to his work.  […]

I cannot overstate how important the band The Velvet Underground has been in my life. Almost immediately upon my first exposure to them, I strongly identified with a perceived artistic truth and purity in their music.  Something deeply resonated with me despite having never done illegal drugs or engaged in any less-than-conventional lifestyle choices.  On […]