Content Warning: Photosensitive viewers may have trouble enjoying Quantumania as there are many sequences involving flashing lights. The 31st Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) release is also the kick-off the fifth phase of the MCU as a whole and the second… Read More ›
From the titular King of Wuxia, King Hu’s A Touch of Zen is what wuxia cinema is all about. In this groundbreaking entry in the genre, a poor scholar named Gu (Shih Chun) paints the portrait of a mysterious stranger… Read More ›
My first true introduction to Jackie Chan was in the summer of 1995. 15-year-old me witnessed Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction) give an enthusiastic speech about the infectious manner Jackie’s films had in the theater. Before presenting him with his lifetime… Read More ›
When people talk about the career of martial artist and actor Jackie Chan, there’s one film that almost everyone mentions because of the incredible stunt work in the climactic battle: Police Story (1985). That film would go on to start… Read More ›
“ZEPPELINS. BOMBS. BORDELLOS. BURIALS. RIGG. REED.” This is one of several taglines attached to the marketing for the Basil Dearden-directed (Dead of Night) action comedy The Assassination Bureau, a film adapted from a Jack London (The Call of the Wild)… Read More ›
To not mince words about it, I used to be a very avid collector of movie-related art (within reason) and had a substantial collection of posters, steelbooks, one sheets, and so forth. It was something that I prided myself on,… Read More ›
The New Gods series from Light Chaser is a refreshing approach to cultural stories. Each one of their films, even if not listed with the New Gods label (White Snake and Green Snake) allows the audience to engage with the… Read More ›
“You’re an orphan now, that’s like, origin story shit.” From the first shot of a hooded hero, you’re all in on Daniel Goldhaber and Ariela Barer’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Co-written by both, directed by one, and starring… Read More ›
Comedy is tragedy plus time. – Author Mark Twain Though Edgar Allen Poe’s 1841 story The Murders in the Rue Morgue is widely considered the first detective story, there’s a long standing relationship between murder and storytelling. Whether in dramatics… Read More ›
Though some suggest that elder Millennials are breaking the trauma cycles of past generations, there’s always going to be a bit of a struggle between generations as each individual struggles to figure out who they are in the world separate… Read More ›
Over the course of writer/director Terry Gilliam’s career, whether it’s been Monty Python-related or not, each of his films have shared a fairly standard commonality: he’s written or adapted them. In the beginning of his career, his intention was to… Read More ›
There is something special about anthology movies that often get overlooked. They’re essentially a curated collection of shorts that, when brought together, tell an overarching story. Several movies have done this before, like the V/H/S franchise, The ABCs of Death,… Read More ›
Martial artist. Stuntman. Action director. Comedic Actor. Romantic lead? The first four absolutely describe world-renowned physical performer Jackie Chan, but the last? Certainly during his time making films with studio/distributor Golden Harvest, that’s not something the actor dared pursue as… Read More ›
Writer/director Makoto Shinkai’s been telling stories since the late-1990s, but didn’t become as widely well-known in the United States until his 2016 release Your Name. (君の名は。) which combined science fiction/fantasy elements through a natural disaster with young love, creating one… Read More ›
There is something special about movies that feel like time capsules that in no way, shape, or form stand the true test of time. While the love and admiration of them is certainly questioned with a modern lens, they are… Read More ›
No less than 13 years after James Cameron introduced the world to the land of Pandora in Avatar (2009), the long-awaited sequel Avatar: The Way of Water finally saw a theatrical release in December 2022. Now, on the heels of… Read More ›
Before Donn Pearce published his 1965 novel Cool Hand Luke, he’d reportedly spent six years drafting it as he pieced together a dramatic tale crafted from his imagination, his experience in a prison camp working on a chain gang, and… Read More ›
The concept of “punk” is a rebellion against the mainstream. As it relates to music, the term was used to describe rock bands of the late-‘60s to early ‘70s that played rock tunes fast, hard, and, often, in brief. For… Read More ›
Beginning as a character in a serial, Dashiell Hammett’s hard-boiled detective Sam Spade has appeared in the original 1930 tale The Maltese Falcon, two films of the same name, several short stories, and several short films. Of the characterizations, the… Read More ›
It is 2023 and the theatrical window is dangerously small now. Things that aren’t being made on $100 million budgets are barely seeing the theatrical window to begin with, and then a physical release is even less likely, and if… Read More ›