Category: Reviews
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Icky Sex in Movies: Part One
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Read more: Icky Sex in Movies: Part OneSometimes it’s hard to believe what other people get up to when it comes to their nether regions. The early twentieth century child killer Albert Fish liked to soak balls of wool in lighter fluid, shove them up his bum and set fire to them. That was when he wasn’t driving needles into his groin…
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Hail Caesar! (2016): Christs, crammed by Coens, into a Messianic Monument of a Movie
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Read more: Hail Caesar! (2016): Christs, crammed by Coens, into a Messianic Monument of a MovieThat’s the key to Hail Caesar! one word, from the Hebrew ‘Mashiah’–’he who is anointed’, anointed for what? Nobody agrees.
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Films Feminism Forgot: Harriet Craig (1950)
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Read more: Films Feminism Forgot: Harriet Craig (1950)A marriage without children is not only pointless, but arguably as dangerous as plutonium.
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District 9 (2009)
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Read more: District 9 (2009)As action flicks go, District 9 excels beyond measure, but leave it to a genre film with B-movie splatter gore sensibility to create an immersive experience that generates more human pathos than a hundred overcooked dramas about the holocaust or racism.
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White Heat (1949)
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Read more: White Heat (1949)Synopsis: Not every mummy’s boy is a pansy. Director: Raoul Walsh Cast: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O’Brien, Steve Cochran, Margaret Wycherly Goodfellas’ Joe Pesci won an Oscar for his Spider-squashing portrayal of a nutso mobster but when it comes to wiping people out he pales next to his forerunner, the similarly dwarfish Cagney. Good…
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A Few More Ruthless Villains: 80’s Action Edition
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Read more: A Few More Ruthless Villains: 80’s Action EditionA Few Ruthless Movie Villains is a popular article that I wrote a few years ago. Time flies, and it is now past time to honor some more unsavory bad guys, this time, 80’s Action style. I will concentrate on the attributes or tags of villain, bully, and sheer nastiness. Most of the movies are…
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Witness For the Prosecution
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Read more: Witness For the ProsecutionWitness for the Prosecution is a Billy Wilder classic based on the novel by Agatha Christie. There are many great courtroom drama movies, like 12 Angry Men, with plot surprises, turns and twists, but there is no other movie like this one for a shocking and unexpected conclusion. This film is one of the very best.…
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Naughty Postcards from a Hungarian Trashmeister
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Read more: Naughty Postcards from a Hungarian TrashmeisterSordid glory. Would you call that the defining trait of writer Joe Eszterhas’ distinctive body of work? After all, this is the man who cooked up Basic Instinct, Sliver and Showgirls in his steamy, body-filled kitchen. Most screenwriters dawdle in obscurity, even if their creative juice results in a colossal hit, but Eszterhas gained notoriety…
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Starring Debuts #25: Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future (1985)
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Read more: Starring Debuts #25: Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future (1985)Fox was a lightweight actor, his limitations exposed whenever he took on stuff with any gravity, such as a rape-objecting grunt in Casualties of War or a cokehead loser in Bright Lights, Big City. Man, does he not sit right in those two flicks, but as a bewildered Californian schoolboy frantically trying to save his…
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Top 10 Romantic Movies that won’t make you want to shoot up your local Ann Taylor
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Read more: Top 10 Romantic Movies that won’t make you want to shoot up your local Ann TaylorAll movies have a love story—I don’t say that in vain, in college I had two screenwriting professors (both working, agented and credited) who hammered the point home “Every movie has a love story—remember that, Mr. Cobb.” “I understand.” “Do you? Because I’m sixty pages into your college-student-with-a-shotgun script and I haven’t detected a note…