In Inside Out (2015), the 15th feature from Pixar, feelings are not just the focus of the story. They are the main characters. The primary emotions of preteen girl Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias) get a workout when she’s uprooted from friends and activities in Minnesota, where she’s a devoted member of a hockey team, and […]
David Lynch looks behind the smiling faces and stucco houses of small town America and finds a shadow world of pure evil in Blue Velvet (1986). From the opening shots Lynch turns the Technicolor picture postcard images of middle class homes and tree lined lanes into a dreamy vision on the edge of nightmare. College […]
Basket Case (Arrow, Blu-ray) Ichi the Killer (Well Go, Blu-ray) Macon County Line (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray) The Hidden (Warner Archive, Blu-ray) Basket Case (1982), the debut feature of filmmaker Frank Henenlotter, is a gruesome little cult indie-horror drama of brotherly love and righteous vengeance shot on location in the seedier sections of New York City. […]
This is not your father’s Hamlet (2000). This melancholy Dane is son of the deceased Chairman of Denmark Corporation. His castle is a sleek but alienating New York high rise dotted with omnipresent surveillance cameras, his kingdom city streets lined with paparazzi and tabloid reporters. Ethan Hawke is the youngest actor to tackle the role […]
Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series (Paramount, Blu-ray, DVD) More than 25 years after the original Twin Peaks ended on network TV in 1990, creators David Lynch and Mark Frost were given complete freedom to produce a sequel series for Showtime. Almost every member of the original cast returned to reprise their characters (including a […]
Batman vs. Two-Face (Warner, Blu-ray, DVD) The 2016 DC Animated Movie Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, featuring Adam West and Burt Ward, stars of the campy original 1960s TV series Batman, as the voices of Batman and Robin and Julie Newmar reprising her purr as Catwoman, proved popular enough to inspire a sequel. Batman […]
Pour yourself a cup of joe, cut a slice of cherry pie, and let your mind free to roam the surreal TV noir that could only have sprung from the mind of David Lynch. Twin Peaks changed our ideas of what kinds of stories and storytelling was possible on television, and it did so on […]
Created by Michelle and Robert King, the first season of The Good Wife offers a classic legal drama reframed by a ripped-from-the-headlines twist. Julianna Margulies’ Alicia Florrick is the publically loyal but privately ambivalent wife of a disgraced Chicago politician (Chris Noth), who resigns in the face of a sex scandal. “Six months later,” Alicia […]
