Living for the Cinema

In the small, isolated Nevada town of Perfection, two aimless handymen Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward) were just minding their own business working their latest gig when they suddenly discover strange things occurring....including the inexplicable death of some one who has hidden way up on a light pole in the middle of nowhere.  What were they afraid of....something on the ground....or unde...

Wilson (Terrance Stamp) is a career criminal from the UK who is now coming to Los Angeles to find out about what happened to his daughter (Melissa George) who just tragically died in a car accident....or did she?  Her father suspects that she might have been murdered and he suspects that it might have been her wealthy, older record executive boyfriend Terry played by the late, great Peter Fonda. ...

Taking place within a future apocalyptic wasteland, Denzel Washington plays the titular Eli and he's traversing through this wasteland with an all-important book (hence the title)...along with a super-sharp machete blade, shotgun, killer instincts, and car battery-powered IPod Classic.  Things get hairy once he arrives in the wrong town where the local villain Carnegie (Gary Oldman) wants to...

Twenty years ago, Two-time Oscar winner Oliver Stone (Platoon, JFK, Wall Street) finally had the opportunity to direct the grand-scale historical epic which he and several of his directing peers (Scorsese, Kubrick) had been trying to helm for decades.....the story of Alexander the Great who once lead a MASSIVE Macedonian Empire which at one point comprised around half of the land mass in the Easte...

Acclaimed independent filmmaker Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Tangerine) both wrote and directed this dramedy about a Brooklyn sex worker/exotic dancer named Ani (Mikey Madison) who one night meets a wealthy young Russian named Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) at her club.  She dances for him and apparently they hit it off SO well that within a few days, they decide to get married in Vegas.  They soon r...

The Griswalds Are Back!  Only this time, they're staying home for Christmas in this third entry of the highly popular "National Lampoon's Vacation" which started in the early '80s.  Chevy Chase once again returns as the enduringly hapless Clark Griswald while Beverly D'Angelo also returns as Ellen Griswald, his long-suffering wife.  And for the third film in a row, th...

Coming out more than sixteen years after its beloved predecessor (2001: A Space Odyssey), this might have been the very first "Legacy Sequel."  Also whereas the first film was directed by the late great cinema legend Stanley Kubrick, this one was helmed by journeyman director Peter Hyams (Running Scared, Capricorn One, Timecop) who in tandem with the author (Arthur C. Clarke) of the orig...

This is the semi-autobiographical musical story of Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), a legendary choreographer/director struggling with various addictions as he juggles developing a new stage musical and editing a film he has directed.  And it was directed by legendary choreographer/director Bob Fosse (Cabaret, Lenny) who at the time was dealing with many of the struggles when he wasn't winning mult...

What happens when the acclaimed and idiosyncratic director of JFK, Natural Born Killers, and The Doors attempts to direct a conventional sports drama about his favorite sport?  Multiple Oscar-winner Oliver Stone showed us back in December 1999 that the result would be clearly anything BUT conventional!  And he had quite the cast for this epic tail of a few weeks in the life of the fictional Miami...

Fifty years ago, recent Oscar winner Francis Ford Coppola returned to write and direct what was likely one of the most highly anticipated sequels in the history of cinema.....and barely two years after the original film (The Godfather) had set the world by storm not only setting box office records but winning several Oscars including Best Picture.  How could any film live up to that?  Well in the...

STRENGTH AND HONOR! The legendary Sir Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner) returns to Ancient Rome to direct this long-awaited sequel to his Best Picture-winning, blockbuster smash from twenty four years ago, Gladiator.  This continuation takes place around sixteen years later as the legacy of the both Maximus and the late Emperor Marcus Aurelius has seemingly waned.  Rome is now even more corrupt w...

Forty years ago this December saw the release of the most popular AND influential action comedies of all time.  This was star Eddie Murphy's immediate follow-up to his two breakout hits the previous years, 48 Hrs. in '82 and then Trading Places in '83, only THIS time he was the sole star above the title for the first time.  And Eddie did not disappoint with this fish-out-of-water co...

Closing out a decade comprising two iconic hits (Heat, The Last of the Mohicans), Oscar-nominated director Michael Mann decided to next collaborate with Oscar-winning writer Eric Roth (Forest Gump) on this docudrama about a controversial story which ran at the highly-rated news-program "60 Minutes" just a few years prior.  This news segment focused on an interview with "Big Tobacco&...

The Pope has suddenly died and a new one must be elected via a titular conclave as soon as possible at Vatican City.  Cardinal Law (Ralph Fiennes) has been tasked with running this conclave and must not only ensure that every viable candidate has been properly vetted but that the nominating and voting processes are fair among all other cardinals.  And what results is akin to a courtroom/legal dram...

David Ayers (Suicide Squad, The Beekeeper) directs this brutal war drama which takes place during the last days of World War II along the German front.  We follow a crew riding within a tank known as the titular "Fury" which is lead by Brad Pitt's grizzled veteran nick-named "Wardaddy."  Pitt leads a stellar cast including Michael Pena, Shia LeBouf, Jon Bernthal and Logan...

In the grand tradition of such intimate war epics as Dunkirk and Black Hawk Down, Oscar-winner Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Skyfall) directed this ground-level journey of two young British army privates (Dean-Charles Chapman, George MacKay) who are sent on an urgent mission during World War I to deliver a message that will hopefully stop 1,600 men from walking straight into a deadly trap set by th...

DIVORCE WEEK continues (and concludes) with this game-changing domestic drama directed by Robert Benton (Places in the Heart, Nobody's Fool) which not only nominated for nine Oscars but would also win five Oscars including Best Picture for 1979.  Starring as the titular Kramer's are Dustin Hoffman as Ted and Meryl Streep as Joanna - they are a young married couple living in New York City...

What happens when you take one of Hollywood's most popular on-screen couples at the time and pin them against each other in a movie about divorce?  Thirty-five years ago, newly minted director (and co-star) Danny DeVito was apparently the first to attempt to answer that question....and he did so with the big-time movie star pairing which he had co-starred recently in two popular romantic acti...

If a very handsome and friendly young veteran named David visited your home one afternoon with a warm smile and some very kind words about your son whom he served with overseas....wouldn't YOU invite him over to stay?  That's the main question which kicks off this lean, mean horror thriller directed by aspiring genre master Adam Wingard (You're Next, Godzilla Vs Kong) and starring D...

There's a serial killer around New York city going around murdering people in increasingly bizarre ways while also leaving increasingly minute details behind as clues.  Denzel Washington plays the brilliant criminologist Lincoln Rhymes who has been paralyzed from the neck down but can still solve clues while bedridden and Angelina Jolie plays Amelia, a plucky young beat cop-former model with...

LIVE FROM NEW YORK.... For any one born after 1975 (or before), "Saturday Night Live" has been an American entertainment institution...an irreverent weekly platform for up-to-the-minute comedy featuring promising performers, many of whom would go on to be massive stars in various media.  But it wasn't always that way....and director Jason Reitman (Juno, Up In the Air) has decided to...

ONE TWO, Freddy's coming for you... THREE FOUR, Better lock your door... Forty years ago this November saw the release of one of the most influential horror films of all time directed by the late, great Wes Craven who would gradually be acknowledged as one of the true masters of the horror genre having directed iconic genre classics before this (The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left...

Michael Douglas, Mullets, and Motorcycles....what else do you need? 🤔 Well you also have the legendary Japanese movie star Ken Takakura, vibrant young Andy Garcia, gorgeous visuals from cinematographer Jan de Bont, sadly the last performance from Yusaka Matsuda, plus THE first great action score from Hans Zimmer.  Oh and it's directed by Sir Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator, Thelma & Louis...

Forty years ago this Fall, we saw the release of one of the most influential genre films of the Modern Era, this low-budget sci-fi horror thriller directed by a young upstart named James Cameron....this being his first full-on feature film.  It was a simple tale about a mild-mannered young waitress named Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) who unknowingly holds a very unique position to fight a future w...

Oscar-winning director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Bram Stoker's Dracula) has finally done it....he has completed his long-in-the-works passion project, an original story which he began developing as far back as the late '70's.  It's about the fictional futuristic city of New Rome where a brilliant architect (Adam Driver) has been tasked with redesignin...