![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() Great-uncles lead to great adventure for a boy in need of a loving home. Some have put down this movie as sentimental and bland, but I found it wry and satisfying. Especially for boys and men, the resonance runs deep. Come to think of it, it would be the perfect movie to watch on Father’s Day,… |
||||||
![]() Animal House is many things: riotously funny movie, cultural touchstone, seminal hard-R teen comedy. Those make it a font of archetypes and catchphrases, including Bluto (“Seven years of college down the drain.”), Neidermeyer (“A Pledge Pin!”), Dean Wormer (“DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION!”), Flounde…
WikChip Video
"He can't do that to our pledges!"
|
||||||
![]() Half anthropological study, half snuff film, Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto is fascinating and often breathtaking. Oh yeah, it’s also gratuitously violent, giving full reign to its creator’s sick taste for hand-to-hand savagery. Mad Mel’s movie canvases a panoply of Mayan curiosities: human sacrif…
WikChip Image
Zero Wolf: Holcane Warrior captain
|
||||||
![]() Like fine wine, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home has gotten better with age. It was too cheesy when it came out, even for Star Trek, the ultimate in SciFi fondue. That was then, this is now. It’s set in the 23rd Century and now, when Now was 1986. I remember that ’86 Now just as I remember n…
WikChip Video
Sitting in a pickup on Marina Green: ...
|
||||||
![]() Infernal Affairs screams Hong Kong 2002. Movie theaters advertise Will Smith & Tommy Lee Jones back in black and Harrison Ford as Capt. Alexei Vostrikov. Within that milieu, Alan Mak & Wai-keung Lau’s blockbuster unspools a cop story of such depth, perfection and tension that Martin Scorsese …
WikChip Video
Rock This
|
||||||
![]() Ultimate naval warfare movie, thy name is Master and Commander. It’s got everything: broadside cannon battles, flogging and grogging, close observation of life aboard an early 19th Century warship, mast-top ocean views, even visits to the Galápagos Islands. Ahoy. Oh yeah, then there’s that…
WikChip Image
1805 military surgery impressively re...
|
||||||
![]() Star Trek VI concluded the original movie series in disappointing fashion. Last of Nicholas Meyer’s II, IV, VI trio, last with the founding cast, ST VI is first in being ridiculous. That’s saying something for Star Trek. Fortunately, Shatner and Crew ensure it’s not without its charms, a…
WikChip Image
Christopher Plummer: 1st Rate Villain
|
||||||
![]() The great Elmore Leonard wrote two kinds of scripts, great ones and, well, er, the great Elmore Leonard wrote one kind of script, not counting the two genres he wrote: Westerns and darkly funny crime dramas. Known more now for the latter, he was a modern master of the former, populating his hair…
WikChip Video
Guitar kicks in 40s into the Joe Kidd...
|
||||||
![]() Still LOL funny after all these years, The Naked Gun’s inspired lunacy retains its comedic potency. Leslie Nielsen’s obtuse police detective played off a rogue’s gallery of evil archetypes, from the Ayatollah and other 1988 Axis of Evil bastards, to a local crime lord, earning legendary stat…
WikChip Video
Taking down an Axis of Evil
|
||||||
![]() “Shane, come back!” could have been a Simon & Garfunkel lyric. Instead, the troubadours chose Joe DiMaggio, another icon of mid-Century American manhood. Yet, Shane endures as a cultural touchstone. Thousands of baby boomers were christened with his clarion clear name…
WikChip Image
Jack Palance: a badass star is born
|