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Stage Fright film review

Alfred Hitchcock might have had a fair-to-good thriller here with Stage Fright had he not blown it with cheap plotting that has made the film one of his most reviled among Hitchcock enthusiasts and historians. The problem relates to the flashback, a device Hitchcock frequently used to good effect. But here, Hitch deceives us from ….

Star Wars: A New Hope film review

When the first Star Wars films came along, they filled a collective need. Movies had gotten too serious — too much realism, not enough escapism. It was a time when audiences wanted to escape from the headlines – as we still do – and return to moral, and cinematic, simplicity. George Lucas delivered the goods. ….

Straw Dogs film review

The movies you love best aren’t always the ones whose ideas you agree with. D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation is easy to admire for its technical innovation but easy to despise for its virulent racism; the Nazi hagiography Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will has similar pleasures – and problems. Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 masterpiece ….

Steal Me film review

Year: 2005 After watching films like Sin City and Pulp Fiction, people rarely leave the theater all abuzz with the excitement of having just seen a really great independent film. More than likely, viewers are excited to have seen such a kick ass action flick or such an awesome crime thriller. If folks get excited ….

Strangers on a Train film review

Picking Alfred Hitchcock’s best movie is a sucker’s game. His talents stretched across so many eras and worked in too many styles to reduce matters to one choice. But it’s hard to resist thinking of Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) as one of the director’s greatest creations; nobody was better at illuminating the charismatic sort of ….

The Sugerland Express film review

Somewhere between unleashing the homicidal tanker of Duel on television audiences and the man-eating shark of Jaws on moviegoers, a young Steven Spielberg found the time to spin a far more human yarn in his debut theatrical feature The Sugarland Express. Employing the same storytelling techniques here as in the more fantastic fables that would ….

Supercop film review

The Jackie Chan franchise continues to expand in America. Riding on the success of last year’s Rumble in the Bronx, Chan returns to U.S. screens with the release of Supercop. Relying on the three pillars of Chandom — blazingly fast fights, awesome stunts, and bad dubbing — Chan once again turns out a crowd pleaser ….

Taxi film review

Meet Belle (Queen Latifah), a classic New York loudmouth with a hunky boyfriend and a dead-end job. By day, she works as a bike messenger, hustling from destination to destination, utilizing garbage truck roofs and crowded department store floors as shortcuts. By night, she spends her time skipping out on dates and transforming her Crown ….

Terminator film review

I’ll never forget the first time I saw James Cameron’s The Terminator. I must have watched that movie at least 100 times during my youth. But during the 101st viewing, the VHS copy I stole from my uncle Dave’s video collection was eaten by my crappy old-school, top-loading VHS player. Damn, that sucked. The Terminator ….

The Thing About My Folks film review

Making a worthy “feel good” movie is the cinematic equivalent of successfully coercing pandas to mate in captivity. Sure, sentimental life-affirmation and skilled filmmaking are nice to look at when they’re sitting side by side, whether they’re munching bamboo or being The Notebook, but to create anything lasting out of the two, they must be ….

Three Kings films review

With two ex-rappers and a guy from ER leading the cast, I wasn’t expecting much from Three Kings. Am I the only one that can still picture Ice Cube being squeezed to death by a huge snake in possibly the worst movie ever, Anaconda? Or how about a buffed-up hood rat named Marky Mark dancing ….

THX 1138

George Lucas’s most grown-up piece of work is, oddly enough, his first feature from 1971, the instant classic of dystopic angst, THX 1138, inaugurating a steady reversal of artistic maturity that would culminate in the cartoonish Star Wars sequels; which is maybe where he wanted to end up all along. An angry, idealistic film that ….