Have You Ever Seen

Everything Everywhere All At Once turned into an unlikely hit last year, then went on to win 7 Oscars just a few months ago. That means it was time for us to cover it because we always review the winner of Best Picture at some point later that summer. Actually, we talked a lot in this episode about many different Oscars shows and we jumped around a lot regarding the plot...which is fitting for a m...

Spencer Tracy & Katharine Hepburn were a great duo and they made many movies together, but they specialized in romantic comedies. Adam's Rib is a rom-com that does a great job with the rom, but isn't nearly funny enough to be called great at the com. The plot has some problems too. George Cukor's courtroom movie has been acclaimed by nearly everybody, but Ryan took real issue in this solo venture...

Bullitt is famous for its car chase (an action scene that many movies have tried---and usually failed---to equal or surpass), but this police thriller has got so much more going for it than just that. As for this being called an action film, well, it's actually more of a murder mystery. Steve McQueen is his trademark Mister Cool, but his romance with Jacqueline Bissett also gives him humanity. It'...

It's become a tradition for us in recent history to cover a disaster film on or near the 4th Of July, so this year's choice is the Auteur Of Explosions, Michael Bay. Armageddon is crass, it has tonal problems, it's edited into incoherence, but, truth is truth, this blockbuster still worked on at least one of us. And we both acknowledge how entertaining it is. Bay's macho, in-your-face filmmaking s...

Superman has been a patriotic force on the big screen seemingly forever, but Richard Donner and his team did it best in 1978. Except for Superman II, none of the sequels or reboots hold any kind of candle to Donner's Supes, especially when it comes to the ways in which Christopher Reeve chose to play him. He's great when he's Superman, but greater at playing Clark Kent. No one else has ever come c...

As far as ensemble "a few days in the life of a bunch of people" movies go, Short Cuts is not only one of Robert Altman's best...it's one of the best anyone has ever made. He maintains a consistent tone and pace beautifully for over 3 hours. It's even pretty tense for a character study. Altman also ties all these Los Angelenos together brilliantly, even though Raymond Carver's short stories aren't...

Nora Ephron's When Harry Met Sally screenplay made for a classic romantic comedy. It's one of the best in the genre. Sleepless In Seattle, however, is a rom-com that isn't funny and we didn't even find it particularly romantic, partly because the couple we're supposed to root for don't even meet until the end. That's a clever idea, but we don't think it works to keep these 2 great stars apart for...

Before anyone gets all excited that this is a review of the Pacino/DePalma version of Scarface, Ryan's latest solo show actually focuses on the Hawks/Muni version. The 1983 "little friend" comes up a lot though, so it's almost like getting 2 reviews in 1. And you should be just as excited about the 1932 original anyway because Paul Muni, director Howard Hawks and producer Howard Hughes (yup, him)...

We haven't reviewed that many silent movies in our previous 516 episodes, but #517 gets into Harold Lloyd's business. There are reasons the sometimes-overlooked silent comedian doesn't have the legacy that Chaplin and Keaton do, even though he should be just as well-remembered. He had the charm of the Tramp and he performed dangerous stunts the way Keaton did. Directors Newmeyer and Taylor's 100-y...

Sidney Lumet and Al Pacino were a terrific combination in the mid-70's and their Serpico is an effectively gritty motion picture, just like their Dog Day Afternoon would be 2 years later. Pacino is nearly at his best in this, even though he feels more like a character actor in a huge cast of character actors than he does a movie star. The real-life Frank Serpico was an absolutist who risked deadly...

POW movies might seem like a dime a dozen now, but 70 years ago they weren't common. And POW comedies? They really weren't a thing. Of course, The Great Escape set an iconic standard a decade after Stalag 17 that was hard to match...and it doesn't match it. Billy Wilder's film is filled with hijinks and physical comedy, but not even the brilliant funnyman was able to make something that's actually...

With Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse hitting theatres on Friday, we're taking a fond look at INTO The Spider-Verse. This monumental achievement in animation wowed the world 5 years ago, but what really set it apart were 2 big things...heart and humour. Of course, Lord & Miller were heavily involved, so laughs were a given. What's almost as impressive is that this covers many of the same Spider...

Who's a good boy?! Well, the miracle dog who licks his gunshot wound back to health is the Morgan family's very-good boy. Black sharecroppers in 1930s Louisiana had it tough enough, but they finally got their own movie in the early '70s and then had to play second fiddle to...the dog?! But, okay, they don't. Young Kevin Hooks is actually the main character, although Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson...

Have You Ever Seen #512 takes a bus down to the Florida Keys to see what Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Edward G. Robinson are up to at Lionel Barrymore's hotel. Bogart and co-writer/director John Huston are back doing another noir after The Maltese Falcon made them major players in the industry 7 years earlier. Key Largo was also released the very same year as their masterpiece, The Treasure...

Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau didn't team up for the first time in The Odd Couple, but it's one of their most-famous collaborations...and certainly one of their funniest. Feminized Lemmon is the sad, neat-freak and alpha-male Matthau is the brash slob. Clash! This begat an unsatisfying sequel 30 years later and many TV series, but the 1968 film was a blockbuster and remains one of the most-belove...

It was about time we covered a Yasujiro Ozu film. The Japanese director is considered a legend and his Tokyo Story has consistently ranked in the Top 5 of the Sight & Sound polls for decades. He gives us a family reunion of a very unhappy family and slowly reveals why we should care about them. That takes quite a while. Ozu's trademark static camera shots are low to the ground. His characters are...

The day after we talked about a classic animated film set in the ocean---Finding Nemo---Ryan posts a solo gab about another highly-enjoyable seafaring adventure comedy called Moana. The Disney blockbuster is formulaic, but it's fun and fantastically well-made. So, yes, this monologue spends 10 minutes yipping about Moana, but the real thrust of this 509th episode of Have You Ever Seen is a breakdo...

Disney will monopolize Have You Ever Seen's first 2 days of May. We start the month with Finding Nemo, which even 20 years later remains one of Pixar's best stories and feats of animation. Even though he's one of the funniest people in Hollywood, Albert Brooks has to play the killjoy, so the laughs are courtesy of the supporting voice cast, especially Ellen DeGeneres. Her Dory is one of the great...

Emerald Fennell has been acting for more than 15 years, but the first film she wrote and directed just 3 years ago was an unforgettable debut behind the camera. We had a few problems with Promising Young Woman's ending, but this rape-revenge movie succeeds remarkably well up to that point. Fennell has a sense of humour, she casts (smartly) against type and shows empathy for everyone, even the vill...

Join Ryan for a solo trip back to the era of big shoulder pads and huge hair in this 506th edition of Have You Ever Seen. Working Girl represents the first time a Mike Nichols film has been hashed out on this channel since the fall of 2014. His feminist venture into the comedy arena does something The Graduate didn't. It gets funnier as it goes along. Melanie Griffith's character has long been con...

You can't have Revenge Month and not cover a Quentin Tarantino movie. His half of the Grindhouse double-bill, Death Proof, is a throwback to an era of B-level filmmaking that perhaps QT and Robert Rodriguez admire more than audiences did. After all, this was the rare QT box-office bomb. Even he admits it's his worst movie. Still, that car chase is a masterpiece of stunt-work. Real-life stuntwoman-...

A feisty and gorgeous Jane Fonda is a perfect accompaniment to this Easter Monday. Or even if young Jane has nothing to do with the rabbit holiday and even if this is far from her most-challenging role, she DOES headline a fun comedy-western where she gets some payback. And that's fitting since this is Revenge Month. Lee Marvin won the Best Actor Oscar for his dual role as the killer villain and t...

Vengeance is hers! Revenge Month is upon us and the main payback-getters in April will be women. We start with Coralie Fargeat's bloody, gross, violent and awesome Revenge. Her movie is fantastic, but is most of it a fantasy? We got into that possibility and also dug into the symbiosis of #metoo happening around the same time this film was made. Matilda Lutz---who, like her director, didn't become...

We did a brief review of 12 Years A Slave when the film came out nearly 10 years ago. Here in Oscar Month 2023, we delve a lot deeper with the benefit of perspective. This tough-but-necessary film is the pinnacle of slavery movies, partly because it was written and directed by black men (John Ridley and Steve McQueen). Prestige Movies have had far more inclusion in the above-the-line jobs in the d...

If we had covered Braveheart about 20 years ago, most people would have said, "that Mel Gibson is an incredible movie star and can he ever direct a battle scene!" But that nutty Aussie is a complex man. The fun-loving reputation he had in his prime is in tatters now that we've all learned about his many, many flaws in the ensuing years. Yet the man is (or was) a terrific actor---even in a movie wh...