From the opening shot of "Cutter's Way" -- my favorite movie of the 1980s. ... and speaking of critical "best of" movie lists, here's a swell one called "50 Lost Movie Classics," from The Guardian. I might quibble with the…
"'Pan's Labyrinth" is the best movie of 2006. Right? Of course I'm right!" I don't disagree at all with Andy Horbal's list of reservations about annual critics' "Ten Best Lists." Andy (host of the recent, too-marvelous-for-words Film Criticism Blog-a-Thon), sizes…
Fight Flub: America's approach to the fundamentally misconceived "War on Terrorism" thus far... “It’s now fundamentally an information fight. The enemy gets that, and we don’t yet get that, and I think that’s why we’re losing."-- David Kilcullen In "Knowing…
Eddie Murphy and back-up singers in a soul revue from "Dreamgirls." Atlantic, Stax/Volt, Motown... Those are three (four?) of my favorite record labels -- and two of 'em are in the news now. Of course, Bill Condon's film of the…
From Dennis Cozzalio, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, Glendale, CA: The opening of Joe Dante’s cruelly misjudged and overlooked comedy "The ‘Burbs" begins with a vertiginous and hilarious parody of the God’s-eye view shot. Fade in on the…
View image A festive Casa Emerson just before the storm... UPDATE: Um, OK, where were we? Within hours of retrieving my PowerBook from its brain-transplant surgery (the new brain/HD is blank, or mostly blank: It did say "Abby Normal" on…
From Jonathan Pacheco, Anna, TX: When the release of "Eyes Wide Shut" drew near, a lot of the buzz was around it being a "sex film," and some (fools) went as far as to claim that its ambition was to…
Lost treasures of Xanadu -- in a Pennsylvania warehouse? For five years now, one of the great film resources in America has been unjustly imprisoned, boxed up and sitting in the corridors of a film storage facility in Hamlin, Pennsylvania.…
Andy Horbal's Film Criticism Blog-a-Thon -- the center of the movie criticism universe this weekend. This is another contribution to Andy Horbal's Film Criticism Blog-a-Thon at No More Marriages!, a blog which is itself devoted to the subject of film…
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