The Twin Geeks

Capitalizing on the success of rollicking adventure films in the vein of Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark  (1981), as well as the farcical popularity of booming romance novels at the time, Robert Zemeckis'  Romancing the Stone saw a significant leap in his success as a director, paving the way for important projects to further bolster his career in the immediate future, and cemen...

The dark shadow of an unbelievable atrocity plays as the background to Christian Petzold's multifaceted drama straddling such themes as evolving identity, a city scarred, the complexities and perceptions of an intimate relationship, and a wealth of other topics. On the surface, though,  Phoenix  presents a relatively simple premise with popular intrigue. The story of a disfigured woman posing...

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As a key solidifier of their early reputation, the Coen Brothers’ dark comic masterpiece enjoys a lauded reputation for its unique setting, memorable characters, and unequal blend of macabre drama and brilliant comedy. Fargo is perhaps the most prominent flagship of the brothers’ filmography, standing as not only their earliest and most prominent success, but perhaps the most enduring as well. Few...

t’s the Twin Geekscast! With our very special hosts, David and Murph? For many, our cultural jubilance at the sheer presence of Kermit and the like began with this landmark sketch series, but for others its accessibility has only recently been made possible thanks to its inclusion in the Disney+ canon. The brainchild of Jim Henson, The Muppet Show was the revolutionary sketch comedy/late night pro...

With the 93rd Annual Academy Awards ceremony in the rearview, with every winner and loser alike accounted for, we look back to one of the most prolific Oscar winners of the past thirty years. One that has permeated all spheres of our popular culture, for better or worse, and is greatly emblematic of the types of films the Academy historically prefers to recognize. Director Robert Zemeckis was at t...

The charming and hilarious story of a young rich boy obsessed with death and romantically entangled with a life-loving septuagenarian who has a penchant for posing nude and stealing cars, is a tale as old as time, or so it feels in the perennially charming Harold and Maude. Hal Ashby's beloved romantic black comedy captures our hearts with its reflections on the embrace of life juxtaposed with...

In a year of many cinematic milestones, the comparably modest aspirations of the comedy Western Destry Rides Again still manage to stand the test of time to prove an enduring and vital classic of the Western genre. At the same time luminaries such as John Ford were revitalizing the genre with prestige films such as Stagecoach, director George Marshall and the genre-specializing producers at Univer...

The mere mention of Rocky Balboa brings to mind images of patriotism, a dramatic embodiment of the American Dream, where a man with nothing can rise to the top based purely on the fortitude of his mettle. It might also conjure up ideas of Soviet-American conflict, incoherent mumbling, a love of extended montage sequences, and maybe even robot butlers. The first of the Rocky films hardly resembles...

In only three short years, Writer/Director Preston Sturges managed to climb from the lowly rung of Hollywood screenwriter to become one of the highest paid men in the entire country, making the unprecedented transition from doctoring hackneyed studio scripts to directing superlative auteur efforts, culminating in the smash success of The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. This eccentric romantic comed...

As one of Hitchcock's most iconic films, and perhaps the most definitive take on his favorite "Wrong Man" narrative theme, North by Northwest perseveres as an influential titan of globe-trotting adventure thriller. Bearing all the hallmarks of the famed Master of Suspense's signature style, Cary Grant is bounced from one luxurious locale to another, mistaken as an international spy...

As the studio system began its slow decline in tandem with radical social changes occurring in the 1960s, the Golden Age of the Western genre itself was crawling to a close. Before long, the hyper virulent Westerns of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone would take hold, while the old masters faded into the background. Before that, however, one of the great artists who helped to shape the genre would ha...

Having just taken home the Golden Globe for Best Picture and Best Director, Chloé Zhao's Nomadland feels like the film of the moment. This chronicle of American outcasts, left to wander the various badlands of the country in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse known as The Great Recession, is a moving and heartfelt portrait of an abandoned sect of the population, forced to fend for th...

Coming off the heels of his most celebrated comedy successes, director Howard Hawks would lend his veteran sensibilities to the screenwriting talents of one pre-directorial Billy Wilder, who would soon take his cues from Hawks' proven methodology and apply them to his own filmmaking craft the following year. Ball of Fire was the last script Wilder wrote with his first great collaborator Charle...

As one of the most influential fantasy films of its times, and the crown jewel of surrealist filmmaker Jean Cocteau's career, La belle et la Bête (or Beauty and the Beast for American audiences) is one of the most ethereal and otherworldly interpretations of childlike wonderment to ever make its way to the screen. Cocteau's film reinvented the story of a hideous Beast who becomes enchanted...

In the midst of America's engagement in the Second World War, when the horrors of Nazism and the eradication of the Jewish population were just coming to light, Hollywoods most renowned German émigré set out to skewer the facade of Hitlers regime with the most powerful tools provided to him: the gift of farcical comedy. Ernst Lubitsch's biting masterwork To Be or Not to Be remains one of t...

Often called the greatest concert film of all time, Jonathan Demme's landmark film captures the legendary artistry from pioneer New Wave rock group Talking Heads. More than just a document of the band's greatest hits in an astounding live performance, Stop Making Sense is a living work of expression all on its own, breaking down the barrier between audience and performer by stitching toget...

Adapted from two of the acclaimed seafaring novels from Patrick O'Brian, Peter Weir's swashbuckling blockbuster epic has been receiving its due resurgence in recent years, having underperformed at the box office upon initial release but rightfully heralded now as a behemoth historical adventure with plenty of action and an excruciating eye for period detail. Even as CGI was becoming the ma...

As the silent era reared to a close, the incomparable Buster Keaton delivered one last slapstick masterpiece, serving not only as testimony to the bravura talents he'd already built up over an incredible career, but also a metatextual reflection on the filmmaking process itself, taking on the role of a plucky newsreel cameraman in order to win the affections of his dashing leading lady. With a...

There are but few others who have come to represent the Western genre as fully as Clint Eastwood. From Sergio Leone to Josey Wales, the laconically scowling scoundrel permeates our culture as the signature symbol of the frontier. Wielding this iconic clout, Eastwood chose to make his final stamp on the genre with the ultimate de-mystifying of its hero-worshipping ways, rendering a bleak, uncomprom...

New Year, New Geeks. Watching movies in 2020 was a bit of a different experience for us all. Instead of going out, we all stayed home, and while there wasn't necessarily a shortage of new content to consume, many of us took the opportunity to turn towards that ever-growing watchlist of proposed classics we've been neglecting. To start off the new year right we want to look back at some of...

Long upheld as the supposed "Greatest Film of All Time," Orson Welles' original opus, the astounding Citizen Kane, is one of few films to be labeled with such a title and manage to live up to its insurmountable reputation. Kane continues to be a paragon of cinematic ingenuity, with its erratic and inventive story structure, pioneering cinematography, and ingenious balance of wit, chari...

Helloooooooo Nurse! As much as we're all tired of the lifeless, hackneyed, uninspired trend of Hollywood recycling old properties nostalgically linked to the informative upbringings of Millennials and Generation X, news of Hulu reviving the classic Warner Bros. cartoon Animaniacs was like a shot in the arm, as one could hardly resist the return of the chaotic Warner Brothers (and the Warner Si...

Eddie Muller once said Double Indemnity is the essential Film Noir. While one could say there are better or more thematically interesting Film Noirs, none better encapsulate the expressionistic and cynical sphere of the movement as Billy Wilder's 1944 masterpiece. It was one of the first to truly define the style with its dark shadows, tantalizing crime plot, and brazenly sexual dialogue cleve...

After taking a seasonal reprieve ourselves, we return with a lighthearted examination of Jacques Tati's famous comic outing which catapulted the indelible image of his beloved Monsieur Hulot character into the public sphere. Tati goes bananas in Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, a beach-themed comedy delight which sees Tati and his famously fumbling character get up to many antics while trying to...