The Twin Geeks

Reviled in its time, but now a cult classic for its creative subversion of the Michael Myers formula, Halloween III: Season of the Witch is the most seasonal film of the franchise, and perhaps the greatest delight as well. The bleached Captain Kirk mask has been traded in for a more traditional set of Halloween icons, but the evil hidden within pervades this new commercial threat in equal measures...

If we're being honest here, there's only one reason we're covering this film for our monthly block of horror episodes: cohost Calvin Kemph's undying enthusiasm for Groundhog Day-like films and its fusion with the slasher genre of horror. Whether it's in the form of a Netflix mini-series, an international festival favorite, or prattling on about the famous film itself, this guy...

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As the leaves change their colors and the year crawls into the spookiest month of all, we look to those captivating holiday favorites to put us in the proper mood. While not yet regarded as a rightful classic, the early motion-capture animation film Monster House has endured in our minds as one of the best encapsulations of the Halloween spirit on film. It blends the inherent silliness and humor o...

In the wake of the horrific Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Hong Kong action director John Woo was inspired to apply his hyper-stylistic, ultra-violent directorial prowess to showcase the horrors of dictatorial reign and juxtaposing the political conflicts of the day with the similar conflicts of protest revolving around the Vietnam War. Those who are used to Woos balls-to-the-wall style of dir...

For nearly two decades the rocking teen comedy dominated the cinematic landscape as the preeminent escapist dream to the days of our rambunctious youths, and none perhaps more nostalgically than Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused. Boasting one of the most electric soundtrack selections of any film, and all the warm remembrance of the culture of 1970s freedom, this perennial favorite has mo...

The tragic and unexpected passing of Chadwick Boseman has us all in deep mourning. Some would say he was just getting started, only recently having risen to the ranks of legends with breakthrough successes as the preeminent Black superhero, as well as embodying the legacy of several major Black icons for the screen. The latter of these feels most fitting in the wake of his passing, having coincide...

With the first images of a new reimagining of the caped crusader recently revealed, there is no better time than the present to retrace the history of the fabled Dark Knight's first incarnation on the silver screen. The 1960s version of Batman, as played by Adam West, is famous and beloved for its unrivaled comic approach to the character, wittily delving into the unmined absurdism of the supe...

The ultimate Spaghetti Western and one of the most iconic films of all time, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly still stands as a titan of cinema and a personal favorite of The Twin Geekscast. Just as Leone was building with larger and larger ambitions, so too have we been looking forward to getting around to this foundational and epic Western classic. From the monumental scope of the story's buri...

The most significant film of Preston Sturges' legacy makes a case for itself in asserting the importance of comedy as an artform like no other work has. The concluding thoughts on entertainment being all some people have is a profound statement for one of the zaniest comedies of the 1940s. The tonal dichotomy of Sullivan's Travels may be hard to swallow at first, but the deftness with whic...

Tim Burton's signature gothic styling was a perfect suit for the realization of the strange and sad, but also often humorous and heart-warming, true story of the proclaimed "worst director of all time". His sensibilities from films like Beetlejuice (1988) and Edward Scissorhands (1990) translate to the bizarre collision of the terrible 1950's B movies made by the titular director a...

For his first film both as a producer and in color, Alfred Hitchcock set out on a bold experiment to adapt a drawing-room set stage play about the playful murder of a former classmate by two friends in a singularly composed presentation through as few cuts as physically possible for the time. Rope has often been dismissed as a one-off film by the legendary master for being singular in its technica...

Charlie Chaplin once called George Stevens' lurid encapsulation of ambition, desire, love, and unconscionable murder: "The greatest movie ever made about America." A Place in the Sun is a titanic film in tackling grandiose themes of American duality. The story charts a struggle between the polarizing embodiments of class within the country while also spinning a yarn of unbridled sexual...

In the wake of master maestro Ennio Morricone's passing this week, we look to one of his most memorable and emotionally stunning compositions in memoriam of his illustrious and unrivaled career as a musician extraordinaire. Cinema Paradiso is as profound a love letter to cinema as they come, one that captures the true magic and unifying power of the medium, as we see reverberations of emotion...

Sergio Leone's electrifying follow up to the massive success of his groundbreaking A Fistful of Dollars (1964) demonstrates marked improvement on everything that made the original Italian Western such a sensation to begin with. The stakes and drama are upped with the inclusion of a secondary lead to compliment Clint Eastwood's laconic Man with No Name: the dignified Lee Van Cleef in a care...

Director Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of the most respected auteurs of the Japanese cinema. An heir to the legacy of Yasujirō Ozu, Kore-eda has found universal acclaim for his heartfelt family dramas. Expanding his international lens, this year finds the release of his first non-Japanese-language film, The Truth. We're honored to present a conversation about his new film, touching on the shifting...

The latest film from director Spike Lee comes at a time of utmost relevancy, as the country continues to rail against systematic racism and the imperative energy of the Black Lives Matter movement. Reminding us that the lingering effects of the disastrous Vietnam War still permeate in our society, Da 5 Bloods weaves the tragic after effects of that unending conflict with the ongoing struggle of Bl...

As a follow up to the smash, blockbuster success of his inspired body-horror remake The Fly (1986), David Cronenberg's more dramatically centered observation of inner human turmoils still more than delivers on the external horrors of his ethos, but without relying on the more obliquely grotesque images that have come to be expected of him. The bulky and inhumanly organic looks of the twin gyne...

The stylized, subversive, and astonishing legacy of the Spaghetti Western starts here, with Sergio Leone's explosive genre breakthrough, making the careers of not only himself, but also squinting star Clint Eastwood and legendary composer Ennio Morricone. Despite its infamous plagiarizing of Akira Kurosawa's samurai smash Yojimbo (1961), A Fistful of Dollars has carved out its own respecta...

Jacques Demy's beloved musical sensibilities brought to France the style and glamour of Golden Age Hollywood extravagance with the grace and grounded human elements embodied by the French New Wave of the 1960s. With The Umbrellas of Cherbourg he took the emotional intent of the musical format to the next level by not only coating the film in a candy-colored, dreamlike cinematic look, but by ma...

A modern RomCom film with a whopper of a dramatic hook, The Big Sick is a refreshingly honest and touching tale of love, personal growth, and cultural hurdles plucked from the real life courtship of writers Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon. Nanjiani also stars in the film, marrying his capable comedic sensibilities as best seen in his role on Silicon Valley with the raw, dramatic chops of someone...

Perceived as something like a disaster during its time, Robert Altman's bizarre realization of E.C. Segar's beloved cartoon sailor with an affinity for spinach is at once a confounding but astonishingly enrapturing collage of comic slapstick humor, Altman-esque naturalism and scale, and a train wreck musical adaptation all packaged into one, not entirely cohesive, film. Robin Williams and...

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Often overlooked in favor of the more famous contemporary comics of his time, Harold Lloyd was at least an equal to both Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in terms of his comedic capabilities and his part in pushing the cinematic medium towards the mainstream. In his time, he was more active and at times more popular than the other two more famous filmmakers, but in the proceeding century of cinem...