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![]() Who Framed Roger Rabbit harked back to a bygone era, even as it kicked-off today’s advanced one. It resuscitated hand-drawn cartoons, yet was the first to mix animation with live action, presaging the half-human, half-fake movies common ever since. Ironic, no. Oh yeah, Roger Rabbit is also dr…
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Sexiest Debut Ever
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![]() Quentin Tarantino defines True Romance more than the major stars who are in it – Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Samuel L. Jackson & James Gandolfini included – or its big-time director, Top Gun Tony Scott. Pulp fiction and Mexican standoffs mark…
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Crazy Kids
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![]() Hollywood loves Hollywood, always has and still does, especially Quentin Tarantino, local boy made good. He has outdone himself with Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, which is quite simply Peak Tarantino. It’s literally AND figuratively about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: true crime even…
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Easter Eggs Revealed
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![]() Looking for a real vampire movie? Baroque, bloody, bawdy, not to mention strict with the rules, Interview with the Vampire fits the bill. Indeed, Anne Rice’s celebrated novel led to a quintessential vampire movie: star powered, obsessively detailed and expansively imagined. Even mature movie…
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Feast Your Fangs, er... Eyes on This
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![]() The House on Telegraph Hill is a triumph of art direction. That’s good. It’s also unintentionally campy. That’s bad. The result is a just OK movie, yet one that belongs in the San Francisco Cinema Hall of Fame. The views are marvelous. And the views are the thing with San Francisco real…
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Grt Views, Lrg House, fake Telegraph ...
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![]() 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…
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Sitting in a pickup on Marina Green: ...
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![]() Big time action-comedies kind of got started with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy in 48 Hrs. Big stars, big action, big laughs – big time. Walter Hill was an action guy, a Western action guy. Directing megahunk Nolte, with a never funnier Murphy, set in San Francisco, his big hit paved the way f…
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"New Sheriff in Town" Reggie Hammond
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![]() In Old California is a simpleminded recreation of Old Sacramento in 1848 and then 1849, made in 1942. A quasi-historical tale, it mostly exists to showcase John Wayne looking quite-the-dandy, from Boston even. The settings are the thing now: pre-49er San Francisco and then up the river to Old…
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John Wayne, the Boston Dandy
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![]() The Conversation was one of Francis Ford Coppola’s celebrated early Seventies movies, nominated for Best Picture and winner of the Palme d’Or. Deeply accomplished, occasionally fascinating, a time capsule of San Francisco from 1973, it nonetheless disappoints all these decades later. The min…
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Coppola talks 'The Conversation' in 1974
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![]() Turn it up! I’d done just that right before an opening title card instructed “This film should be played loud!” You don’t say. Clapton, Van Morrison, Dylan, Muddy Waters, Neil Young, the Band: Of course turn it up. The Last Waltz has been lauded as a landmark concert film since it appeared i…
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There is a song of dream comfort.
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