Have You Ever Seen

Luis Bunuel was a master director who was often ahead of his time. This isn't the only surreal movie he made, although it isn't always easy to figure out what's real and what's fantasy in this case. In fact, Belle De Jour had us questioning if ANY of this often-masochistic story is real. It's a difficult one to unravel because there's the forward-thinking focus on Catherine Deneuve's sexual empowe...

We cover a lot of movies about movies on this channel. For the 437th Ellises' Analysis, we're digging into what Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas and friends are up to in The Bad And The Beautiful. The story paints Douglas' studio boss as a charismatic devil, but Ryan has sympathy for said devil (yet again) because the bad man is just not bad enough. Perhaps Vincente Minnelli or his actors or even MGM pul...

Pete Docter has directed four of Pixar's very-best films, including Up and Inside Out. Soul makes him 4 for 4, even though it's just a step or two behind those other 2 masterpieces. It's hard to dispute that Docter & Kemp Powers helmed the best animation and design in Pixar's recent history, although we wondered if kids liked Soul as much as adults probably did when it came out. Were they interest...

Bonus episode! So what happened at the Oscars? Did people win awards for these mediocre movies while the Twitter-verse crapped all over everything and then the movie stars just happily & quietly went home? Well, of course not. Will Smith assaulted Chris Rock because of a joke and that cast a pall over the rest of what was otherwise an inclusive and fairly-funny show. We kicked this episode off by...

Fittingly, the day after a passably uplifting film wins Best Picture of 2021, we post a chat about The Lost Weekend. Billy Wilder was a genius at tragi-comedy, so he isn't at his best directing something like this. Still, his Oscars-sweeper remains an effective effort. Most of Wilder's legendary films were ahead in the '50s, but his Oscar-festooned 1945 "drinking'll wreck ya" drama is a vivid fore...

The 94th Academy Awards are only days away and for the first time in many years, we weren't big fans of a lot of the nominees. For that matter, we weren't huge fans of most of the 2021 movies in general. Judging by what many respected critics are saying, the Ellises are the outliers. Well, groupthink is dull anyway, right? We'll be tweeting live on the big night ( @moviefiend51  and  @bevelliselli...

Box-office hit Argo was well-loved and won some top prizes at the Oscars a decade ago. In a year that also featured the likes of Amour, Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty, was it worthy of winning Best Picture? Well, let's just say that Bev was not kind to Ben Affleck's crowning achievement. It doesn't help that the director (mis)cast himself in the lead role, which whitewashed the real CIA ope...

Let's take a trip to Germany in the early 1930s and check into the Grand Hotel along with MGM's all-star cast. It wasn't as common then as it is now to cast so many big names like Garbo, Crawford, Beery and the Barrymores in the same movie, but it paid off. This was a hit and went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Edmund Goulding's interwoven-character study represents the very first time in n...

We are thrilled to report that Call Me By Your Name remains a deeply moving film. It might have been even more effective this time than it was back in 2017. Armie Hammer's real-life controversies have caused many people to sour hard on him and his career is probably in jeopardy, but truth is truth: the dreamboat has more chemistry with Timothee Chalamet in this than you'll see in an episode of Bre...

The "Month Of Strange Love" goes to extremely trippy places in the 430th Ellises' Analysis as we try our best to decipher what's going on in Lost Highway. The American original David Lynch is a wonderful enigma who often gets big-name actors to go to strange places in his baffling art films that don't always make obvious sense. Look closer though and you also might notice that even this auteur oft...

I suppose you'd be wise to spend some of your Valentine's Day hearing us warble about Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent and friends do mighty good work in Away From Her. The 2 leads are quiet dynamite, but Olympia Dukakis, Michael Murphy and Kristen Thomson are a fair bit of gentle TNT themselves. Sarah Polley's debut as both a writer and director is a sensitive, lovely film about senior citizens. Wh...

February is our "Month Of Strange Love" and the 1st of 4 unusual sex and/or romance films we've chosen is the one about the Spade-ist and the Magg-osist. The 2 lead performances in Steven Shainberg's Secretary are the main event. Slinky sexy James Spader has been in other perverse pictures like this and he's always convincingly saucy. Maggie Gyllenhaal, on other hand, was not the obvious choice, a...

One of the greatest technically creative directors of comedies has got to be Edgar Wright. We love his enthusiasm, his warmth and his talent…although we don't actually love a lot of his movies. Well, hold on, one of us thinks Shaun Of The Dead is hysterical and the other thinks Wright's peak of greatness is Hot Fuzz. Both yuck-fests are jammed with homages and references and also a lot of cartooni...

Many movies made outside Hollywood are among the best of any given year, but the Brazilian-made City Of God remains a revered classic of this entire century. That's how several critics groups and Best Of lists feel about it, at least. It's not so simple for us. The slightly dated filmmaking techniques are a little much (especially the frenzied editing) and it's A LOT much to have to look at 2 hour...

We tackle a Michael Moore documentary for the 3rd time on this channel in this 425th Ellises' Analysis and this movie is about as politically divisive as anything the funny activist has ever made. The man has been remarkably influential from the beginning of his career, but especially after this highly successful documentary came out and asked if America is full of gun nuts...or are they just nuts...

Todd Solondz has been a master of "cringe cinema" for more than 25 years and Welcome To The Dollhouse is the misanthropic director at his peak. He understands what real children and real teenagers go through better than most filmmakers do and he certainly understands the effects of bullying. Heather Matarazzo's take on Dawn Wiener is nicely complex too because she isn't just a sweet victim of the...

We begin the 7th Annual Month O' Bev with a spirited chat about one of her favourite satires. Starship Troopers was a split decision in this 423rd Ellises' Analysis though because Ryan just doesn't have a good feeling about Paul Verhoeven's intergalactic war flick. It's deliberately campy and it's lathered in self-aware propaganda, plus the F/X are marvelous, but it also has tonal problems. Castin...

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...