Have You Ever Seen

Of all the blaxploitation films that were made in the '70s, Shaft was the most influential and probably the coolest too. It's even had longevity, as evidenced by all the sequels and remakes. People (including the AFI) haven't forgotten about Gordon Parks' private dick flick, which had a fresh take on just what a black hero could be. Richard Roundtree wasn't righteous and measured like Sidney Poiti...

If you like your Christmas movies—especially the stars of your Christmas movies—to be very big and very loud, Bill Murray's hard-drinking performance in Scrooged probably feels like your perfect slice of turkey. It's an unpopular opinion, but we weren't Murray fans in this movie, especially in the unearned finale where he just comes across as phony and desperate. He also seems…gulp…miscast? He cer...

There's no greater way to celebrate episode #420 of The Ellises' Analysis than to talk about one of the side-splittingest stoner movies ever made. Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle is crass, politically incorrect, gross and often pretty dumb, but it's also funny to the EXTREEEEEEME! From the hysterical Neil Patrick Harris cameo to the surreal fantasy sequences to the eternal "Hold On" sing-along...

The holiday season is here and who wouldn't enjoy a getaway to an apparently gigantic northeastern inn during the Christmas break? Well, one Ellis wouldn't enjoy that vacation as much as the other. Actually, we agreed that White Christmas is overlong, that there's too much going on in the erratic screenplay and that the film has one of the worst Idiot Plots of all time. Still, because of all that...

Light up a cigarette (or many cigarettes) and kickstart your existential crisis as you gulp down the 418th Ellises' Analysis. Joel & Ethan Coen followed up their run of hysterical '90s comedies with this black & white sorta-comedy. This might seem like an odd film, but it's actually got more depth and enjoyably offbeat ideas than most of their previous work. Oh and fear not. The Man Who Wasn't The...

Minari didn't rake in bucks at the box office earlier in this weird year and having to read pesky subtitles still turns a lot of people off, but this movie is very worth your time. It's simply a charm offensive. Lee Isaac Chung's beautiful and relatable family film is even more relatable if you've ever struggled to make ends meet while also trying to live your (maybe impossible) dream. Chung's ent...

Niki Caro was making only her 2nd movie when she wrote and directed Whale Rider, so she showed the world her skills really early on. This sweet story aimed directly at kids (despite its absurd PG rating) is all about an ordinary (yet also magical) girl from New Zealand who loves her grandfather to pieces, but the maddening gramps is a slave to the patriarchy and blames his granddaughter for every...

Terry Gilliam's tragicomic The Fisher King packs in a lot of themes, but a big one is kindness. This is a movie all about empathy and acceptance. Also, how often do Hollywood movies show much of the plight of homeless people? Or deal with depression and suicide? Or show our indifference to the suffering of others AND to blend all that serious material with absurdity and humour? Gilliam likes his w...

He was a big star before it, but Eddie Murphy became galactic after Beverly Hills Cop came out in 1984. His blockbuster hit remains funny all these years later even though it deals with some deadly serious subject matter like death and so much destruction. Martin Brest directed a tremendous action comedy, but his picture is even more impressive when you consider they were apparently winging it a l...

We put the finishing touches on this year's "Scary Movie Month" with a gab about a dynamite zombie flick from South Korea. Train To Busan is just as much an action movie as it is a horror movie. Director Yeon Sang-ho keeps up the intense pace by having his frenzied film play out almost in real time. He also hits most of the usual zombie beats by layering in class issues and the fear of your fellow...

The 412th Ellises' Analysis has us gabbing about ghosts as we continue with Scary Movie Month. The Others isn't truly frightening (especially once you've seen it a few times), but writer/director Alejandro Amenabar certainly knows how to make a moody chiller with a killer climax. This is a throwback to classic tension-builders from long ago that focuses on what you don't see. Amenabar lets terrifi...

Scary Movie Month is officially here! We start it with one of the landmark slasher flicks of the '90s, perhaps one of the greats of all time. Shockmaster director Wes Craven knew better than almost anyone how to make something like Scream work. His movie has a high body count and gallons of gore, sure, but it's also meta up the nose and it remains pretty funny. Craven also gives us one of the grea...

The 1931 version of Dracula was the first Universal Monster movie and it stars perhaps the most famous vampire actor of all time. Bela Lugosi was certainly committed to the part and this is obviously his trademark role. You'll just have to work hard to overlook his almost funny schtick. Is Lugosi any good as the Count though? Well, is anyone in this cast any good? Maybe one guy (Dwight Frye) nails...

Making a sequel to a beloved classic was always going to be tough sledding, but the talented writer/director Mike Flanagan simply couldn't make a great movie out of Stephen King's follow-up to The Shining. Maybe the failure with Doctor Sleep mostly lies with King's overly detailed book and all of its subplots. Maybe it's that we get far too much of the top-hatted Rebecca Ferguson and her fellow st...

2001 was the year of Puzzle Films and covering Vanilla Sky today means we've now tackled the 4 big ones. Memento, Mulholland Drive and Donnie Darko are all definitely better than Cameron Crowe's attempt to stretch himself and they're certainly not filled with as many maddening flaws. One big problem is that the casting is all wrong here. Both of Tom Cruise's love interests are duds and Cruise, alt...

This is the rare time we've ever posted an episode on Labour Day, but this movie DOES star the man who has to do "every dirty job". Harry Callahan is the quintessential good guy with a gun who has to combat a bad guy with a gun, but Harry is also a reckless vigilante in the Batman mode. This movie is also pretty much just a sadist chasing a sadist around San Francisco. Dirty Harry might be fascist...

"Persona" is Latin for "mask", which makes this Age Of The Mask we've been experiencing for the past year & a half an ideal time to talk about Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece. Well, it's one of his MANY masterpieces. Dude could direct. This is a trippy art film that gives us plenty to debate and tear apart. It's also been imitated half to death in the 55 years since it was made, which is perhaps why...

You know we're talking about a master filmmaker when this channel has already covered more than half of the man's titles and we're only now getting to this gritty crime classic. The Killing was early in Stanley Kubrick's career, so he wasn't yet at the top of his game as he would be for the next 40+ years. Still, there's plenty of examples of the technical prowess that would come to be trademark K...

It's not every comedy that features 2 of the brilliant stars of the Monty Python troupe, but it's actually the Americans who stand out. Kevin Kline was known as a serious actor before A Fish Called Wanda and Jamie Lee Curtis was still mostly thought of as the Scream Queen. So when legendary cut-ups like John Cleese and Michael Palin are overshadowed, you know you're in from something hilarious. Di...

Even though it's all about dark fantasies, depression and death, Harold And Maude is a cult classic that remains solidly funny half a century later. Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon are a fun/odd romantic couple in this unique love story. Gordon is the manic pixie dream lady who has even bleaker plans than the faux-suicidal Cort. We had a serious discussion about the grim subtext, but we didn't forget tha...

It's probably safe to listen to the 402nd Ellises' Analysis…although feel free to ask if it is again. And again. And again. Marathon Man is absolutely filled from start to finish with paranoia, torture and pain. Some of those themes—like the arrogant rich versus the desperate poor—have barely aged. The film's subtext remains oh so timely even 45 years later. The acting styles of Dustin Hoffman and...

The wannabe Ellises are here with our 401st analysis as we jaw-jack about the queen bees of Mean Girls. Lindsay Lohan was at her peak in this era and if you ever doubted her talent (admittedly, it's easy to forget how good she was because of the messy turns her life took), just take another look at this movie. Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert and Amanda Seyfried (in her debut) are also pretty great a...

Our 400th episode talks about one of the influential films of the French New Wave, which was also Francois Truffaut's directorial debut. The 400 Blows is famous for all kinds of reasons (especially that freeze frame at the end), but at heart it's a quiet character study of a young boy who makes bad decisions and has really bad parents. Jean-Pierre Leaud gives one of the great child performances in...

Who didn't think George Clooney practicing real estate law in the unglamorous parts of Hawaii and being cuckolded by the lanky guy from Scream would make for a killer comedy? Well, it might not be killer, but it IS a pretty good comedy. Of course, this particular movie star playing a loser is a stretch (even in Alexander Payne's unique "let's dump life on the leading character" style) but the Cloo...

We conclude Sci-Fi Month by going into the Mother Ship and praising/bashing one of the biggest movies of all time. Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin have made plenty of action and disaster flicks in their day, but ID4 is their best…yet also one of their dumbest. It's also terribly fun, despite all the death and destruction. Will Smith became an alien-punching superstar, Jeff Goldblum quirked it up i...