Author Archive
Film Review – Take Me Home Tonight
As the old saying goes, “What once was old is new again.” So it has become for 80s nostalgia, which, to me, seems to be an ongoing nostalgia. One that reaches back to 1998, when Adam Sandler reintroduced the 80s to the world with The…
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Action Junkie: Street Law and an Intro to the World of Italian Action Cinema
If we are to look at the history of the action film, then the progression of the genre is one that began with the classic American Westerns directed by the likes of John Ford and Howard Hawkes. Films like The Searchers, Stagecoach, and Rio Bravo…
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Noir City at SIFF – Crashout
The 1955 film Crashout, from director Lewis R. Foster (Those Redheads from Seattle), is about as lean and pulpy as they come. The movie opens on a prison, about a second before a massive break. Pandemonium erupts, along with gunfire, as the guards attempt to…
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Noir City at SIFF – The Woman on the Beach
Legendary French director Jean Renoir (The Lower Depths, Grand Illusion, and Rules of the Game) turns in this near-masterpiece of an atmospheric noir film, centering on a love triangle between a Coast Guard officer, a blind artist, and the wife who blinded him. Rare for…
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Noir City at SIFF – Crack-Up
The seedy world of crime/noir stories has often crossed paths with that of the art world. In Charles Willeford’s novel A Burnt Orange Heresy (1971), he invents a new art movement called Nihilist Surrealism, which he uses as a means of his own criticism towards…
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Noir City at SIFF – The Dark Mirror
The Dark Mirror, from German-born director Robert Siodmak, is an oddity of a noir film. Its premise revolves around murder, and more or less the search for the killer. Its approach to going about that is something that, while different, is absorbing and fun. We…
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Action Junkie: McBain – The Movie
McBain. In the world of The Simpsons he is James Bond as if played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. In fact, McBain is a character within a character as played by Rainer Wolfcastle, the Simpsons parody of the ex-Governator. For fans of the show’s earlier years, McBain:…
READ MOREFirst Look at the New Spider-Man
Today Sony Pictures gave the world and Spider-Man fans their first look at actor Andrew Garfield in the iconic costume. Last week, the website Just Jared posted behind the scenes pics of Andrew in Peter Parker attire with Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey. Of course,…
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