While reviewing the Tom Cruise movie The Mummy, I found myself making frequent comparisons to the 1999 movie staring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. Since I had never reviewed this movie in my blog, and since I find it superior to the 2017 remake, I thought I would correct this oversight. This week I’ll...
If… has the distinction of being the first R-rated movie I saw. I was sixteen-years-old and a member of the debate club. The club decided to see the film, and since some where old enough to act as “guardians,” they were able to get the younger members into the film. It was playing at...
History remembers the presidential election of 1936 as a pivotal moment for the United States and for its democracy. That year, Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip captured the Democratic Party with his populist promise of $5,000 to every citizen, financed by raiding the vast fortunes of the very rich. In response to losing the nomination, incumbent...
I guess if you cast Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe in your movie, you can sit down, lean back, put your feet on your desk, and smoke a celebratory cigar. Everything else that needs to happen—from the writing to the filming to the special effects—will happen by osmosis. Success is guaranteed. Hire an accountant...
If on January 1, you had asked me to make a list of my ten most anticipated movies this year, I would’ve struggled over nine titles. Unlike others who review movies on the internet, it isn’t my wont to think so far ahead. I rarely think farther ahead than next weekend; indeed, I often...
Urge and urge and urge, Always the procreate urge of the world, Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex, Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life. As I sat down to write this review about Ridley Scott’s latest installment in the Alien franchise,...
I know the mountain. I lived there for two years. We called it Onion Creek, and it’s not much of a mountain, as mountain goes—more of a foothill—but it was an isolated, rural land populated by outlaws. Everyone carried a firearm, often in Western-styled holsters, and several people were engaged in the then-illegal trade...
Peter Quill was an orphan. After his mother died on Earth, Ravagers, space pirates, abducted him and took him into space, to learn their ways and to assist them in their thefts. Twenty-some years later, he joined with Gamora, Drax, Rocket, and Groot to form the Guardians of the Galaxy. As the Guardians, they...
Movie genres come with expectations. We expect to see magic and mythical beasts in fantasy movies. Monsters in horror films. Car chases in action flicks. The western that doesn’t end in a gunfight is something other than a western. It’s a period piece. With suspense thrillers, we expect rising tensions, twists and turns, and...
IMDB labels Lucy as science-fiction, but I prefer to think of it as fantasy. It’s foundation is the popular but debunked misconception that human beings use only ten percent of their brain, and it posits a scenario where tapping into the other ninety percent gives us extra-human abilities like telekinesis, telepathy, and omniscience. In...
