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Escape from New York
Bear with me here. I’m not saying Escape from New York is a good movie. It most definitely is not. But it is a fun movie. Like Highlander, it would benefit hugely from a remake. Many of the special effects are risible. Some of the casting decisions are worse than that. Donald Pleasance (surely one…
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The Sting
Criterion’s newest collection is movies all about con-games. I love this sub-genre and while some great ones are missing, you can choose from The Grifters, The Lady Eve, Trouble in Paradise, Matchstick Men and, of course, the platonic form of con movies, The Sting. Few movies have such balanced leading-man roles and both Redford and…
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It’s Quieter in the Twilight
Fifteen billion miles from Earth, the Voyager spacecraft glide outward into the vast of interstellar space. They are still working, still communicating, but with power levels in a long, slow decline toward final dysfunction. While in Pasadena, a dozen or so aging engineers, programmers and scientists – the sort of people one NEVER sees on…
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The French Connection
Probably the Platonic Form of the cop chasing criminals movie. A great star (Gene Hackman), a great supporting cast, a ZERO frills (1.44 run-time) script so tight your jaw will need unclenching by the end, one of the great car chases ever – so good it holds up after five decades – and a dark…
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(Anything But) Babylon
La La Land was about people who take their art seriously. Babylon is about people who don’t. And while Hollywood might always have had more of the latter, Babylon fails because A) people who take their art seriously are a lot more interesting than people who are just screwing around and B) Chazelle doesn’t seem…
We are not rational animals, we are animals that must work to be rational
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