There’s no shortage of aesthetic and cultural upheavals that rocked the American film industry in the 1970s, but the most important from a sociological standpoint absolutely has to be the sudden discovery made by the studios early in the decade that nonwhite people liked to watch movies, too. A lesson that has been forgotten and […]
In my head, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is a beloved consensus highlight of 2000s meta-horror that is well understood to be an essential work for genre fans. And maybe that’s how it works in the real world, since every review I read about it seems to contain the sentiment “this is […]
I don’t know what the hell it is with third films always being such a titanic step down in quality, but at least Daimajin Strikes Again comes by it honestly: it was Daiei’s third film in the loosely-connected series within the span of eight months in 1966, meaning it was also screenwriter Yoshida Tetsuro’s third […]
The New Hollywood Cinema was largely a young man’s game, with most of its leading lights part of the first film school generation. Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, and Michael Cimino were both born in 1939; Brian De Palma in 1940; Martin Scorsese in 1942; Terrence Malick in 1943; George Lucas and John Milius in […]
Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the https://www.alternateending.com/2014/09/sin-you-went-away.html blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, we return to the charming world of Basin City, where men […]
The very best thing that ever happened to Magic in the Moonlight is that writer-director Woody Allen made The Curse of the Jade Scorpion prior to it. The two films resemble each other in multiple ways: they’re both set just outside the Great Depression (Jade Scorpion in New York in 1940, Magic in 1928 in […]
Earlier this year, I reviewed the legendary dismal 1969 musical Paint Your Wagon; and would would like to suppose that it’s enough to have hacked through just one of that year’s most notorious genre misfires. But if one is looking at the ebb and flow of Hollywood filmmaking over the years, it would be a […]
By the time the first Daimajin film opened in 1966, it already had a sequel mostly ready to go. In fact, Daiei Film released an entire Daimajin trilogy in that single calendar year, a burst of extreme energy after which the stone daikaiju would go completely silent until a 2010 TV series created by Daiei’s […]
For reasons owing mostly to a capricious, unfair universe, A Most Wanted Man will probably always be first remembered as the movie with Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last starring role. That’s a cruel fate for any film to have to live up to, but at least in this case it’s helped out by Hoffman being absurdly […]
Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: keeping alive the traditions of a franchise best known for assembling all of the best and most manly action […]
What If they made another movie about extravagantly quirky urban white twentysomethings? What if it took place in a loving version of Toronto that somehow still felt exactly like Brooklyn in every other movie in living memory about the same subpopulation? What if it starred Harry Potter, all growed up and able to drink beer, […]
Whatever natural goodwill one has towards the central gimmick of the central gimmick of the Expendables franchise – lookit all the ’80s action stars in one place! and these other guys like Terry Crews and Randy Couture, for no immediately apparent reason! – it has long since been expended worn out by the time arrive […]
