Steven Spielberg’s meticulously-directed, tension-filled, career-redefining thrill machine is as effective today as it was in 1975 when it became a pop culture sensation.
Tag: Universal
Steve Carrell is ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’ on HBO Max
Steve Carrell is a sweet, shy middle-aged geek and the last American virgin in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), the feature debut of director Judd Apatow (who wrote the film with Carrell), an oddly sweet mix of romantic comedy and adolescent shenanigans, albeit with a slightly older cast. When he’s pulled out of the stock room […]
Martin Scorsese’s ‘Casino’ on Peacock
“In the casino, the cardinal rule is to keep them playing and to keep them coming back. The longer they play, the more they lose, and in the end, we get it all.” Five years after his gangland masterpiece GoodFellas, Martin Scorsese reunited with writer Nicholas Pileggi and stars Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci […]
Oscar-winning ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ on Peacock
Matthew McConaughey is so good in Dallas Buyers Club (2013) that he shows up the limitations of this drama based on true events. McConaughey lost a lot weight to play Ron Woodroof, a Texas electrician and rodeo rider in the late 1980s whose reckless lifestyle leaves him with AIDS, a diagnosis this redneck homophobe denies […]
‘The Incredible Shrinking Man’ on Criterion Channel
The title may sound like pure pulp but The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), Jack Arnold’s screen adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel The Shrinking Man, is compassionate, intelligent, and the most metaphysical American science fiction film until Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Scott Carey (Grant Williams), just a guy on a daylong boating excursion, drifts […]
Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’
Is there another American filmmaker who takes such joy in telling stories and spinning cinematic spells as Quentin Tarantino? I don’t mean tackling big issues or making epic statements. I’m talking about the sheer pleasure of telling audiences a tale that takes them places they don’t expect and ways they haven’t quite experienced before. The […]
‘Written on the Wind’ – the bad and the beautiful on Peacock
Douglas Sirk puts the opera back into “soap opera” in the exquisitely baroque melodrama Written on the Wind (1956). And it kicks it from the opening credits: a rushing car, a brewing storm kicking up leaves and whipping the trees, a gunshot, and a man stumbling out of the mansion before the pages of the […]
‘The Bride of Frankenstein’ – a delirious sequel on Peacock and Criterion Channel
Boris Karloff wrings even more pathos from his plight as the misunderstood monster and Elsa Lanchester’s hissing, birdlike performance as the bride made her an instant icon.
The original ‘Frankenstein’ on Peacock
“It’s alive! Alive! In the name of God now I know what it’s like to be God!” James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) is the granddaddy of modern monster movies. Universal was looking to a follow up to the tremendous success of Dracula when it assigned sophomore director Whale to helm an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s famous novel […]
Charlize Theron goes ‘Atomic Blonde’ on VOD and Blu-ray/DVD
Lean, mean, swift, and sure, Atomic Blonde (2017) is the kind of action movie we need in the contemporary morass of CGIed to mush spectacle. That’s not to say it eschews digital effects but director David Leitch, a co-creator and uncredited co-director of John Wick and a veteran stuntman and stunt choreographer, uses digital manipulation […]