Living for the Cinema

'Tis the season for holiday movies!  And what better way to kick off this season than revisiting this Christmas-themed horror gem from the '80's directed by Joe Dante, starring Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates?  The REAL stars are actually the creatures of the title of course - they can start as cute, furry little things known as Mogwai.  But if you violate two of the three rules - don't let them get wet and don't...

It's time to return to the fictional African kingdom introduced to us in one of the strongest films from the Marvel franchise which was also the RARE superhero movie to receive significant awards attention.  Black Panther actually received seven Oscar nominations including for Best Picture and ended up winning three - not bad!

Ryan Coogler also returns to direct though unfortunately the star of that film (Chadwick Boseman) passe...

Thirty years ago, this small little UK thriller from writer/director Neil Jordan took the world by storm - it was a surprise hit at the box office, received near universal critical acclaim, and it also received seven Oscar nominations including for Best Picture.   What ended up being the main driver for much of this film's buzz and success was that it contained a "The Twist" which most audiences weren't expecting......

Forty years ago before this film directed by Ted Kotcheff came out, star Sylvester Stallone was generally associated with the popular character of Rocky Balboa which was created by him six years prior.  Well all of that changed with the surprise success of this taut action thriller released in the fall of 1982  - this was the introduction to audiences of his OTHER beloved character, John Rambo.  Rambo is a veteran of the Vietnam Wa...

True crime dramas have been all the rage on various streaming services and here's a new one on Netflix which is affecting and disturbing, but also a bit different in its approach.  Directed by Tobias Lindholm, we are told the true story of a Pennsylvania nurse who was suspected about twenty years of murdering dozens of his own patients in subtle ways at various local hospitals - his name is Charles and he's played by Oscar ...

Forty years ago, Sydney Pollack directed one of the most acclaimed and most successful comedies of all time with this gender-bending sorta-romantic comedy starring Dustin Hoffman as Michael Dorsey.  Dorsey is an unemployed actor who suddenly finds success disguised as Dorothy Michaels, a suddenly successful actress who becomes of the leads of a popular daytime soap opera.  Jessica Lange plays Julie, her co-star whom Michael falls i...

More than thirty-five years after its release, Die Hard remains among the most influential action films of all time.  Since its release, we have seen dozens of movies following its formula of having ONE good guy within an enclosed space having to take down a group of bad guys lead by a terrorist mastermind.  

This came out only four years after Die Hard and pretty much followed that formula to a T: in this case, the good guy is play...

What better way to close out this scary season than to revisit a gothic horror romance from one of our greatest living directors, Francis Ford Coppola, who directed The Godfather Trilogy among several other modern classics.  This adaptation of the classic 1897 vampire novel of course tells the epic tale of Count Dracula himself played with wild abandon by Gary Oldman clad in various memorable costumes and under gobs of convincing m...

This latest addition to the DC Cinematic Universe stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the titular hero….well he’s not actually a hero, more of an anti-hero who has been bestowed the almighty powers of the gods, THIS is his origin story.  Along with that, we also get introduced to the Justice Society lead by Hawkman played by Aldis Hodge who is joined by Doctor Fate played by Pierce Brosnan along with other heroes.  The story mostly ...

Spooky Season continues with this late ‘90’s throwback to sci-fi horror which is very reminiscent of both Alien and The Shining – this was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson who gave us the Resident Evil series.  It’s basically a very gory haunted-house-in-space thriller which flopped upon initial release 25 years ago but has since gained quite a cult following.  And for good reason because it features a lot of freaky imagery along wit...

Happy 30th Anniversary to one of the most influential independent films of the 1990’s.  This was the directorial debut of future Oscar-winner Quentin Tarantino – he also wrote the screenplay and co-stars as Mr. Brown, who is part of a criminal gang assembled to perpetrate a large diamond heist.  The overall story focuses on both the lead-up and aftermath of said heist…..and everything that goes wrong.  And along the way, we get to ...

Thirty-five years ago, we saw the release of a vampire thriller from a hot new director which truly connected with audiences and is beloved to this day – that film was The Lost Boys and it remains pretty beloved to this day.  This was the OTHER vampire thriller released that same year – it was the second film to be directed by future Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow and it stars Adrian Pasdar as Caleb, a young man living in Oklahoma wh...

Fifteen years ago, the screenwriter of The Bourne Trilogy delivered his directorial debut and it was quite a memorable one!  Tony Gilroy both wrote and directed this complex legal thriller starring George Clooney in the title role as a legal “fixer” who solves problems for the clients of his law firm that their lawyers really can’t touch.  And now Michael comes upon a problem involving one of those said lawyers – his long-time frie...

Billy Eichner stars as Bobby, a single, successful, gay podcaster in his ‘40’s living in the big city who thinks he has everything he wants….until he meets Aaron one night in a club, a dreamy attorney played by Luke MacFarlane.  And now Bobby THINKS he wants love…..as does Aaron…but it’s never that simple is it?  Nicholas Stoller (Neighbors, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) directs this raucous romantic comedy which has attracted a lot o...

Noah Baumbach directs this wistful coming-of-age comedy starring Greta Gerwig as the eponymous Frances who is a 27 year old aspiring dancer trying to find her place in the world after her best friend/roommate Sophie (Mickey Sumner) decides to move away with her fiancé to France.  We follow her misadventures as Frances struggles to find steady work, a suitable home, and maybe even a bit of romance.  This acclaimed indie from ten yea...

1992 was just a great year for independent cinema……you had SO many memorable smaller films directed by both new directors like Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs) and veteran directors like Robert Altman (The Player).  Amidst this crop was this underseen gem directed by Carl Franklin which didn’t have much of a theatrical release nor did it receive much in the way of Oscar attention.  However it DID eventually garner a following on ...

Ten years ago, we saw the second big-screen adaptation of a popular British graphic novel – the previous one (Judge Dredd) which came out in the 1995 starred Sylvester Stallone and was widely disliked by both fans and non-fans of the original comic.  As a result, expectations for this latest version were pretty low in the lead-up to its fall release.  

And then people saw it…..and most were pretty blown away!  The story was straight...

Back in 2019, actress Olivia Wilde dazzled many folks with Booksmart which was her directorial debut – it remains one of the funniest and most inventive comedies of recent years.  So as her follow-up, she has given us an original thriller which is much more ambitious….but is it just as good?  Well it has a mind-bending premise about a seemingly utopian sequestered village in the desert known as the “Victory Project” and it stars Os...

Twenty-five years ago, audiences saw what would be THE first true movie star performance from eventual three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis headlining a large, mainstream action adventure film….and this would also be the last time they would see this as well.  No matter because as directed by Michael Mann, it was quite memorable to be taken back to 1757 and told the story of Hawkeye, a white man raised and adopted by the Mohica...