You couldn’t order a more perfect first generation horror movie knock-off than The Vampire Bat. The 1933 effort by Majestic Pictures (which had no other meaningfully long-lived productions before it was absorbed into Republic Pictures at the end of the ’30s) is very close to the platonic ideal of a cheap-ass attempt to simultaneously copy […]

There’s a particular subgenre of movies that’s really popular, and relied on so heavily that just a few years after it broke out, the Hollywood studios have almost driven it into the ground. Hoping to freshen things up, one of the savviest producers around decides to offer a job to one of the most impressive […]

The 1925 version of The Phantom of the Opera is two things. One of these is the best of the small population of pure horror films made in the United States during the silent era. The other is a thorny mess to talk about, so we need to have some history. The short version of […]

There has been some effort online to stress Damon Lindelof’s presence as co-writer of Tomorrowland and thus somehow save the reputation of the film’s director and other writer, Brad Bird. Which presumes in the first place that Tomorrowland is bad enough to justify insulating the beloved auteur from it, and I think that’s far from […]

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: Disney’s latest effort in brand-mining, Tomorrowland, takes the name (if nothing else) from one of the most famous attractions […]

A review requested by Nathan Morrow, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. As titles go, Mind Game is perfect: it describes exactly what the movie is and plans to do to its audience (it’s also in English, spelled in Latin characters, despite the film being overwhelmingly in Japanese). […]

To begin with, define “horror” in a way that makes everybody happy; then solve the intractable mysteries of cinema history prior to 1920. And once you have done these two things, you can authoritatively state, “this is the first American horror film”. But until we reach that point of pure intellectual fulfillment, the best we […]

Being “disappointed” in Pitch Perfect 2 would require having meaningfully elevated expectations for it, and hopefully not too many people would make that mistake. Cinema history is littered with comedy sequels that fail in exactly the way this one does: re-create the same plot beats and thematic arc, only do everything bigger, more expensive, and […]

A review requested by Kari Johnson, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. You have to hold it just right, but Curious George is sort of the exact moment that traditional animation died in the American studio system. There have been only four theatrically-released studio features animated in a […]

A review requested by John Taylor, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. Reducing any film to the sum of its Oscar trivia is a filthy habit, but it’s also fun and I’m good at it, and Grand Hotel has a real whopper of a piece of trivia associated […]

A review requested by Branden, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. Writer-director Wim Wenders’s The American Friend is, arguably, not a very good adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game at all: it backs off on the thriller elements considerably, alters the tone, jettisons important plot details and changes […]

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: Pitch Perfect 2 is the sequel to one of the most beautiful and rare creatures in this heavily market-researched […]