Back in the 1980s when director John Badham was working steadily, his projects were usually credited as “A John Badham Movie,” with the more casual “movie” replacing the more formal (and common) “film.” This Means War is exactly that same type […]
Continue reading »Month: February 2012
Big Miracle (2012) ✰ ✰ ✰
If you’ve seen the preview for Big Miracle, you know what to expect: an earnest, tear-jerking, heart-warming story of people coming together to save a trio of gray whales stranded in the Arctic. The movie delivers that much, and a […]
Continue reading »The Lost Weekend (1945) ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰
Billy Wilder’s first Academy Award wins came for directing and writing (with Charles Brackett) The Lost Weekend. The film concerns Don Birnam (Ray Milland), a writer living in New York and suffering from alcoholism. His brother (Phillip Terry) plans to […]
Continue reading »Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) ✰ ✰
At the outset of this installment (really the third film in the Michael Myers saga) we are told that the Shape has survived the fire at the end of Halloween II and has been in a high security psychiatric hospital […]
Continue reading »Red Tails (2012) ✰ ✰ ½
This fictionalization of the history and legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen is a very controversial movie, it seems. Red Tails joins the Airmen as a unit stationed in Italy, bypassed for important missions and on the verge of being canceled. Need […]
Continue reading »Chronicle (2012) ✰ ✰ ✰ ½
I suspect that, whether they would admit or not, most people over the age of, say, twelve, are sick of superhero movies. There have been too many over the last fifteen years, and way too many of them have been […]
Continue reading »Man on a Ledge (2012) ✰ ✰ ½
A lightweight heist movie, Man on a Ledge almost works well enough to unashamedly recommend, but not quite. Its final act brings to an abrupt end all the loose threads of its intriguing characters and stories, resulting in a tapestry that, […]
Continue reading »Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) ✰
Opening in Northern California, Halloween III: Season of the Witch begins with a chase. A man carrying a mask is being chased by suited men in a car. He manages to escape, barely, and in the hospital says “They are […]
Continue reading »Mr. Moto (1937 – 1939 [+ 1965])
by Psychdoc77 In the 1930s the B production unit at 20th Century Fox was most famous for the Charlie Chan series of mysteries. A total of 26 Chan films were made there between 1931 and 1942. The series was quite […]
Continue reading »Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937) ✰ ✰ ✰
Peter Lorre played Mr. Moto in a series of eight films made for Fox in the late 1930s and this was the first of them. A lean 66 minutes, Norman Foster’s film packs a significant plot line into essentially four […]
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