2024’s Stopmotion recently left me frustrated, and I thought hard about why that was.  I didn’t find anything in it to be scary, but there were some respectably creepy moments.  It is very much in the mold of contemporary, art-house horror, yet it still has more of a plot than many similar films I have […]

Irene Dunne used to be a huge star, so much so that she was billed over Cary Grant for screwball comedy classic The Awful Truth in 1937.  She was still top-billed in the similarly madcap Lady in a Jam five years later, though this is nowhere near as sharp as that earlier film. Something feels […]

This 1991 neo-noir opens with a scene that got under my skin.  It is a one-two punch of home invasions in Los Angeles. At the first house, there’s a birthday party for a teen boy underway, and this event is being videotaped by his father.  Cynda Williams appears to be a friend of the family […]

Clive Barker has an odd legacy on film.  He completely disowned the movie made from the first story he wrote, which was Underworld.  No, not the picture you’re thinking of, but one George Pavlou directed in 1985 and which isn’t strictly horror.  I find it strange Barker teamed up with Pavlou again just a year […]

The legend of Robin Hood is one of those stories everybody knows, but which has never really clicked with me.  I’m curious why it has endured as long as it has.  It seems, even today, somebody feels compelled to make another movie or television series of it from time to time. I doubt anybody will […]

The term “toxic masculinity” has been in vogue for the past few years.  While I think it is correct to call men out on our bullshit, films such as 1950’s The Capture reveals some weird expectations society has put on men to be “macho”, and I think that environment is partly responsible for some of […]

I am a big fan the two Dr. Phibes movies.  Some people seem to find them mean-spirited, but I think they’re too goofy to take seriously.  Part of what sells it is how much fun Vincent Price is having.  John Considine isn’t Price, but he channels some of that diabolical glee as the villain in […]

I have yet to see a film with the outlandishly popular Minions in it, and yet I find the adoption of them into current zeitgeist irritating.  Hands down, the single worst aspect of 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife were the mini Stay Pufts, which were basically the Minions of that film.  Somebody behind 2024’s Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire […]

My brother-in-law is a massive Ghostbusters fan, which I find curious, as he was all of four years old when the original film was released.  As for myself, I was in the key demographic for it: young enough to clamor for all the tie-in merchandise I could get, while old enough to understand what was […]

I was recently read a book about the making of the movie Airplane!, even though I’m not that film’s biggest fan.  One of the main takeaways for me from Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! is how most of the humor that works best in the film is due to it […]

There are so many character actors I have seen in so many old movies that I’m starting to wonder if I will eventually find a movie where the entire cast is actors like Eugene Pallette, William Demarest and Patsy Kelly.  One such actor is Elisha Cook.  I suspect four randomly picked noirs from that genre’s […]

There’s nothing I like better in a film than snappy dialog.  I have found Bob Hope to be an excellent actor for delivering such repartee.  So I was surprised by how little I laughed when watching 1949’s Sorrowful Jones.  One of the first problems is the dialog scans as smart and snappy, but it isn’t […]

I recently read the most recent Johnathan Carroll novel, Mr. Breakfast, and there was a bit in it where a character is grateful to her boyfriend for introducing her to the films of Preston Sturges.  I think it sad that is a name not more broadly recognized today.  It is almost as depressing to me […]