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Film Review – The Raven
If Edgar Allan Poe joined the X-Men, his mutant name would be “The Raven” and his talent would be the ability to quip while drunk. He would have some anger control issues (just like Wolverine), but Professor Xavier would still send him out on his…
READ MOREDouble Feature Showdown – Ball of Fire vs. A Song is Born
Howard Hawks was never shy about exploring similar ideas in multiple films—Rio Bravo and El Dorado being the best example—but in one instance, he remade a film almost word for word only seven years after the original was released. Ball of Fire versus its musical…
READ MOREFilm Review – Blue Like Jazz
Loosely based on the book Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz, directed by Steve Taylor, tells the story of a fictional Donald Miller (Marshall Allman), a good Texan Southern Baptist boy about to leave home for a…
READ MOREFor the Ladies (Special Whitney Edition) – Waiting to Exhale
With the passing of Whitney Houston, I thought we could journey back to 1995 and discuss a more modern women’s film, Waiting to Exhale. I tend to focus on women’s pictures of earlier decades simply because the films marketed towards women during the ’30s, ’40s,…
READ MOREFilm Review – The Salt of Life
Getting old is hard. Not just because things stop working right or looking as good, but because our lives appear to be set in stone. We are who we are by middle age, and changing that takes a tremendous effort. We start to feel invisible…
READ MOREFilm Review – I Kissed a Vampire
The press materials for I Kissed a Vampire, directed by Chris Nolan (not that Chris Nolan), want you to know that it is a perfect mixture of Twilight and Glee/High School Musical. I am not a big fan of the “Movie C = a perfect…
READ MOREDouble Feature Showdown – A Stolen Life vs. Dead Ringer
Some movies beg to be compared; others demand to go mano-a-mano. Who am I to resist this challenge? It turns out Bette Davis made not one, but two, movies where she plays twins: A Stolen Life and Dead Ringer. In both movies, one twin dies…
READ MOREFilm Review – Carol Channing: Larger Than Life
If you are my age (43) or younger, you probably know Carol Channing from her appearance on The Muppet Show and maybe her role in Thoroughly Modern Millie, which is a really weird movie that traumatized me as a child. If you are a theater…
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