Whenever this day arrives, I think of how popular culture usually depicts momentous days in history as ones where ordinary life stands still, and the way it really is: the momentous thing happens, but there are also all of these ordinary things that have to occur as if it were a day like any other. … Read more
SPOILERS FOR ALIEN ROMULUS: Fede Alvarez’s “Alien Romulus,” the latest entry in the “Alien” franchise, is a sturdily constructed movie with two thoughtfully written lead characters at its center. One is Rain (Cailee Spaeny), an orphaned miner who joins a reckless scheme to break into a decommissioned space station, steal lifeforms that are still in … Read more
Today we’re going to celebrate the career of one of the great makers of genre and B-movies, whose robust adventure films and harrowing sci-fi pictures paved the way for the second half of the 20th and 21st century. Case in point this marvel, the too-little-seen and even less discussed “The Power,” a proto-superhero movie with … Read more
The box office is the place where the hermetically sealed wonderland of the movie theater connects with the world outside. Removing that—along with marquees on the theater itself and out on the road leading to the theater—shifts movie theaters into the “out of sight, out of mind” category,” which I think is ultimately bad for … Read more
Did the look of “Collateral” seem like a step down for Mann, and for movies? I worried about that. The actual movie, which came out 20 years ago this week and just came out on 4K Blu-ray for the first time, was a much richer experience. It didn’t look slick or solid like Mann’s shot-on-film projects. It … Read more
I thought, “Oh, I’ll skip reading that piece and save it until I see the movie this weekend.” My wife had already seen it and loved it. We had a young daughter and would take turns going to movies by ourselves while the other stayed home. But as I turned the page, purely by happenstance, my eye … Read more
Quill defines them all as “losers” at one point in the story. The description is not as self-flagellating as it initially might seem. He’s reclaiming the word by redefining a loser not as somebody who cannot or will not “win” but as somebody who’s lost something precious but keeps going anyway. No other character in the MCU franchise … Read more
So do the terms of the original contract mean you could make a “Repo Man” sequel but you couldn’t show it outside of the United States? We [could, but we] would have to sell it to Universal [first], because they own the foreign rights to a “Repo Man” sequel. In theory, could Universal do a … Read more
Ramsey and Hunter’s conflicting philosophies are put to the ultimate test under the direst possible circumstances. They’re already on high alert thanks to a Russian separatist group that has taken control of a nuclear missile battery. The Alabama is ordered to fire its nukes to stop the seemingly imminent attack. But this already-dire situation is … Read more
[LIGHTS DIM; VIDEO STARTS PLAYING] Many of my favorite films have endings that most people would consider unhappy. But I don’t. To me, the only ending that makes me unhappy is the wrong ending. “The Parallax View,” the 1974 paranoid thriller starring Warren Beatty as a renegade reporter investigating the murder of a United States senator, has … Read more