Much like Star Wars, it’s hard to remember how radical Jurassic Park was when it came out. Sure, there had been CGI effects before, dating all the way back to 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes. But the scale (hah!) of what Industrial Light and Magic did with the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park changed the […]
Logan’s Run is the last of the great, pre-Star Wars sci-fi epics. The vast, clean sets and the (frankly) unrealistic look of the technology was the hallmark of 1960’s sci-fi (2001: A Space Oddysey notwithstanding) and I’ve always loved it. It’s very much the style that influenced the “Austin Powers” movies. But […]
Yes, January. I know it’s February 26th as I post this, but I’m wa-a-a-a-a-ay behind on the reviews and I’m just caught up to The Venus Flytrap, the last film I saw in January. I’m not behind on watching films. Right now, I stand at 59 films, or two ahead of the […]
The Venus Flytrap (more often found as The Revenge of Dr. X, listed on IMDb as The Double Garden) is a Japan-made sci-fi/horror film starring a down-on-his-luck James Craig as a scientist who tries to prove his theory of man’s evolution by creating a “human” plant. Typical b-movie stuff, of course, but this one […]
Ah, Toy Story. Although they had done several shorts and dozens of memorable TV commercials (Listerine bottles swinging on vines and dancing gummi Life Savers ring a bell?), it was with this, the first computer animated feature film, that Pixar Animation Studios made its name and reputation. Prior to Toy Story, precious few […]
Bananas is Woody Allen’s second full film (after the re-dubbing of 1966’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily? and 1969’s Take the Money and Run) and it’s the first to make major use of Allen’s “loser” character, the guy who has everything go wrong, but still gets the girl in the end somehow. Of course, being […]
I decided that the one type of film I didn’t watch last year that I should have was the movie serial. A mainstay for decades, their influence is still felt today in things like the Star Wars Saga and many television adventure series. I figure that if I watch the whole thing, that […]
Heaven Can Wait has always been one of my favorite films and it’s the one that made me an unabashed fan of the great Charles Grodin.
But there’s so much more to this film than just that. Heaven Can Wait (for those of you who don’t know) is a re-make of a popular (and excellent, […]
Purple Rain is the film and album that truly put Prince on the map. Oh, he had had success before, particularly with 1999 and the song “Little Red Corvette”. But it was nothing like the full assault that was Purple Rain in the summer of 1984. And it’s easy to see why. […]
The Cheap Detective followed hard on the heels of writer Neil Simon’s previous mystery parody, 1976’s Murder by Death. While Murder by Death had an impressive cast (David Niven, Alec Guiness, Maggie Smith, Peter Sellers, etc.) playing parodies of a wide variety of mystery characters, I think it was clear that the standout was […]
For a complete change of pace, I next watched what I consider to be one of the best (if not THE best) documentary of a music group, The Filth and the Fury. Filth tells of the rise and fall of The Sex Pistols, with the approval and involvement of the band. Much of […]
After delving deeply into the Superman mythos last year, I was in the mood to revisit one of the lesser known corners with 1984’s Supergirl. First of all, it has a lot of problems. The story is a bit nonsensical and the character of Lara/Linda/Supergirl isn’t properly fleshed out. (Is she an […]
I was in the mood for something easy to watch, so I next chose This is Spinal Tap , since I’ve seen it so many times that I don’t need to focus in too hard on it anymore. Tap is an all-time classic, with phrases like “goes to eleven” becoming commonplace in popular culture. […]
Next up, was The Emperor’s New Groove, which I reviewed fully last year. It had been my intent to watch the Disney Feature Animation canon in chronological order, but this one came on TV and I couldn’t help but watch it. Since getting into the whole “Emperor’s” universe, I’ve learned a lot about […]
You know, I held off watching another film way too long out of some weird sense of not wanting to watch something “unworthy”. But as time has gone on, I’m settling in to watching what I would’ve watched anyway.
First of all, I’ve been on a huge “Hitchhiker’s” kick since last year, when my sister […]
I’ve been watching my Saturday Night Live season one set and it’s been fascinating to see how the show evolved in the early days before it became the show we all now know. Two key things jump out at me. First, that no matter how great we think those early days were compared […]