Film Review Archive

  • Where does it come from: I believe it was an extra on some release – I do not know which, but it has its own IMDB page and was produced […]

    Inferno – Making of the Expendables

    Where does it come from: I believe it was an extra on some release – I do not know which, but it has its own IMDB page and was produced […]

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  • This review is a discursive plug for Alex Cox’s book, 10,000 Ways to Die.  Cox synopsizes just about every Spaghetti Western ever made.  His estimations of the films themselves, though, are […]

    The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

    This review is a discursive plug for Alex Cox’s book, 10,000 Ways to Die.  Cox synopsizes just about every Spaghetti Western ever made.  His estimations of the films themselves, though, are […]

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  • Conspicuous by his absence from the soundtrack, Bowie as beautiful, androgynous space freak is all over Velvet Goldmine. Quite a few people, Bowie included, cattily dismissed the movie as a […]

    Velvet Goldmine

    Conspicuous by his absence from the soundtrack, Bowie as beautiful, androgynous space freak is all over Velvet Goldmine. Quite a few people, Bowie included, cattily dismissed the movie as a […]

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  • 54 years and change. That was about three years ago now for Nick Cave, whose semi-documentary is one of the odder meditations around on music, art, and the folly of […]

    20,000 Days on Earth

    54 years and change. That was about three years ago now for Nick Cave, whose semi-documentary is one of the odder meditations around on music, art, and the folly of […]

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  • Working for Universal Studios in the 1950s, director Douglas Sirk beat TV at its own game by churning out a series of Technicolored soaps that embalmed some of the brightest female […]

    Written on the Wind

    Working for Universal Studios in the 1950s, director Douglas Sirk beat TV at its own game by churning out a series of Technicolored soaps that embalmed some of the brightest female […]

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  • Director Preston Sturges ribs Hollywood.  Here, Joel McCrea plays a guilt-stricken director of comedies who wants to make a socially relevant film.  Dressed as a bum, he hits the road in […]

    Sullivan’s Travels

    Director Preston Sturges ribs Hollywood.  Here, Joel McCrea plays a guilt-stricken director of comedies who wants to make a socially relevant film.  Dressed as a bum, he hits the road in […]

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  • Based on an autobiography, this Pre-Code gem is unique because it wears its social conscience on its sleeve (it depicts the Georgia prison system as it was in those years), and it’s […]

    I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

    Based on an autobiography, this Pre-Code gem is unique because it wears its social conscience on its sleeve (it depicts the Georgia prison system as it was in those years), and it’s […]

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  • Near Dark is a vampire Western.  The first hour shows a farmhand’s seduction by, and ‘nitiation into, a roving, nocturnal gang of sh*t-kickers who happen to be bloodsuckers.  In the movie’s […]

    Near Dark

    Near Dark is a vampire Western.  The first hour shows a farmhand’s seduction by, and ‘nitiation into, a roving, nocturnal gang of sh*t-kickers who happen to be bloodsuckers.  In the movie’s […]

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  • Blue Velvet is arguably David Lynch’s best film.  Much is said about the film’s “aboutness”:  It is a willfully weird Hardy Boys mystery about sexual awakening—a dry cartoon about the rot beneath the […]

    Blue Velvet

    Blue Velvet is arguably David Lynch’s best film.  Much is said about the film’s “aboutness”:  It is a willfully weird Hardy Boys mystery about sexual awakening—a dry cartoon about the rot beneath the […]

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  • Separating the movie The Evil Dead from the phenomenon of Sam Raimi’s early career, of Bruce Campbell’s genre-stardom, of the whole story of the production of the film, is nearly impossible. […]

    The Evil Dead (1981)

    Separating the movie The Evil Dead from the phenomenon of Sam Raimi’s early career, of Bruce Campbell’s genre-stardom, of the whole story of the production of the film, is nearly impossible. […]

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