Living for the Cinema

Together, co-directors/co-writers Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinart have graced us with what is likely the most original and uniquely entertaining film of 2022 so far.  It stars Michelle Yeoh as the beleaguered owner of a laundromat who along with her husband (played by Ke Huy Quan) finds herself sucked into an elaborate adventure through the “multi-verse” where we watch several different incarnations...

March Madness continues with this sports drama starring Nick Nolte as Pete Bell, the coach for a fictional college basketball program at Western University.  Under his leadership, this program has been winning for years but what do you do when the winning stops?  Well if you’re Coach Pete, you have some tough decisions to make as to just how far you will go to recruiter the best talent out there f...

THE prototypical buddy cop movie has just reached its 35th-anniversary as directed by the late great Richard Donner. It stars Mel Gibson and Danny Glover as the iconic Riggs & Murtaugh – they’re assigned as partners for the first time and needless to say, things are pretty tense off the bat.  But as they get enveloped in a complicated murder case involving the death of the daughter of one of M...

In the long-standing Hollywood tradition of The African Queen and Romancing the Stone , we have a NEW version of one of those types of stories with this action/adventure rom-com featuring two attractive stars (Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum) on a treacherous quest through the South American jungle to find….the titular "Lost City" of D.   Along the way, we also have Danielle Radcliffe as...

Thirty years ago, writer/director Ron Shelton followed up his classic baseball comedy Bull Durham with this buddy comedy/romantic comedy set in the world of street basketball around Los Angeles.  It stars Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson as two basketball hustlers who end hustling each other on the courts…..along with teaming up to hustle others.  Every one just shines in this movie including Ros...

Thirty years ago, director Paul Verhoeven followed up his modern action classics Total Recall and Robocop with this erotic mystery thriller starring Michael Douglas as a troubled San Francisco police detective investigating the grisly murder of a former rock star.  The chief suspect is a famous author who was dating the victim played by Sharon Stone in what was a genuine star-making performance. ...

Fifty years ago this month, we saw the release of one the greatest and most influential films in the history of American cinema.  Directed by a then-relatively unknown Francis Ford Coppola and adapted from a hugely popular fictional best-seller from a few years prior from author Mario Puzo, this movie took the world by storm having a instant and long-lasting impact on not only films but pop cultur...

Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, let’s revisit the ‘90’s blockbuster thriller which helped make dying rivers (the Chicago River) green for the holiday mainstream.  This epic blockbuster stars Harrison Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble as The Fugitive on the run after being falsely convicted for the murder of his wife.   It also co-stars Tommy Lee Jones as U.S. Marshall Sam Gerard who’s hot on his trai...

How did a small, idiosyncratic western family drama directed by someone who had not done a feature film in more than a decade become this year’s Oscar front-runner??   Campion has now become the first woman to receive two nominations for Best Director – her previous one was more than 27 years ago for The Piano.  The story takes place in 1920s Montana and is mainly focused on two brothers who run a...

The character of Batman has been everywhere in media in recent years….and yet it has been almost ten years since we had a proper stand-alone Batman movie since "The Dark Knight Rises." We close out our ongoing series examining this latest incarnation of the Batman/Bruce Wayne character, this time starring Robert Pattinson in the title role and directed by Matt Reeves, who gave us the las...

We kick off Women’s History Month with this often touching and funny corporate legal drama based on true events directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Julia Roberts in the titular lead role, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar that year.  Julia plays a single mother/ex-beauty queen who gets a  job with a law firm in Southern California run by Albert Finney’s Ed Masry, a role he received a...

Thriller Week continues with the latest directorial effort from the legendary Steven Soderbergh who apparently filmed this on the fly in Seattle at the height of the COVID pandemic.  This movie is a nifty little thriller starring Zoey Kravitz as a tech analyst for a new modern home-based communications device along the lines of Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri….this one is called the “Kimi.”   While...

Twenty years ago, acclaimed director David Fincher followed up his generational anti-establishment classic Fight Club with this more straightforward genre film starring Two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster as a recent divorcee who has moved into a cavernous Manhattan apartment with her daughter played a pre-teen, Kristen Stewart.  And this fancy multi-level home happens to have a panic room….and jus...

LANGUAGE & CONTENT WARNING During Black History Month, we review this seminal Civil War epic about the first official black regiment….the 54th Massachusetts Infantry led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw played by Matthew Broderick.  This story follows his efforts to get his men the opportunity to fight the Confederates along with the training and evolutions of several black soldiers including Trip...

Back in 2005, writer/director Chris Nolan brought us back to Gotham City and more importantly….to the Batman.  He took the character of Bruce Wayne/Batman in a completely different direction from previous films (the last one being Batman & Robin in ’97) by starting fresh at the beginning.  And what results is one of the most interesting and influential origin stories ever told.  Oscar-winner C...

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, we review one of the more underappreciated romantic comedies from the ’90s. It was hyped by its studio as “The NEXT Pretty Woman” and while it didn’t even come close to approaching runaway success of that Julia Roberts blockbuster, you could make a case that it’s a superior movie.   It stars Andie MacDowell and ‘80’s French acting phenomenon Gerard Depardieu (in h...

15 years ago, we saw the first on-screen pairing of two stars who could have been referred to at the time as the King AND Queen of romantic comedies… Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.   Grant stars as Alex Fletcher, former co-lead singer of the fictional ‘80’s pop group known as “Pop.”  He’s a former pop star that is now a "has-been" and who now has a shot at his first big break in years as...

Happy 30th Anniversary to one of the goofiest and most influential buddy comedies of the ‘90’s starring, based on the Saturday Night Live skit of the same name.    It stars Mike Myers as the titular Wayne and Dana Carvey as his best friend Garth – together they host the show “Wayne’s World” on public access TV out of Wayne’s basement in Aurora, IL.  We follow their adventures as both of them are r...

Kicking off Black History Month, we revisit this historical crime thriller released just a year ago and starring two of today’s most impressive actors, Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeish Stanfield.  Kaluuya stars as Fred Hampton who was the chairman of the Black Panther Party in Illinois in the late 1960s, mostly around Chicago.  He has made quite the name for himself as an effective Civil Rights leader a...

Could this be the greatest film about journalism ever made?   It’s certainly one of the most celebrated investigations of one of the greatest political scandals in American history.   We follow two young reporters from the Washington Post – Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein – as they exhaustively get to the bottom of not only whom was behind the infamous 1972 break-in at the National Democratic Part...

Joel Coen (of the Coen Brothers) directs this latest adaptation of one of William Shakespeare’s most celebrated plays, this time starring two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington as the titular Macbeth and co-starring three-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth.    And what a memorable adaptation it is – everything is filmed in black and white with stark visuals and piercing sound des...

How do you follow up a twisted, dark, and somewhat perverted Batman sequel (previous episode Batman Returns) which upset a lot of parents, angered a fast-food franchise, and freaked out a major studio?   If you're Warner Bros., you take the character of Batman/Bruce Wayne….and cast 90's star Val Kilmer and hire Joel Schumacher to direct and cast the biggest stars at the time including Ji...

This film had the misfortune of being dumped by its studio at the time of release AND coming out the week after Black Panther but make no mistake, this is one of THE most impressive science fiction horror films of recent years.   It was directed by genre master Alex Garland (Ex Machina) and stars Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, and Oscar Isaac.   It all revolves around the e...

RIP to Wolfgang Petersen, a truly gifted filmmaker who was adept at transporting audiences (myself included) into extraordinary circumstances on-screen through relatable characters.  He directed some of the most creative and engaging genre films of the '80's and '90's including Das Boot, The Neverending Story, In the Line of Fire, Enemy Mine, The Perfect Storm, and Outbreak.  H...

What better way to ring in the New Year than to do a deep dive….underwater into the world of submarines?   Let’s start this week with this exciting mid-‘90’s submarine thriller directed by the late, great Tony Scott.  Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman co-star as the new XO and Captain of the U.S.S. Alabama which has just set sail towards Russia as word gets out of a possible revolution there and...