|Chris Ryba-Tures| As I grimly plod into my forties, movie nostalgia has…not so much become a heady escapist drug, so much as an increasingly out-of-body point of fascination. Obviously, because childhood is generally just so easy to wax nostalgic about, but moreover because the… Continue reading
|John Costello| I’m supposed to write about the problem with science fiction tropes—mainly space Westerns—but I keep thinking about Peter Boyle’s portrayal of Sheppard in Outland (1981). Sheppard spends much of his time playing golf in his office, looking like he can’t afford a haircut, a beard trim… Continue reading
|Phil Kolas| The allure of mystery is inescapable in the upcoming quadruple lineup for the 80s ACTION EXTRAVAGANZA II: THE QUICKENING. We do not actually know what the movies in question will be. I tried to find any info about the first extravaganza, but even… Continue reading
|Jake Rudegeair| It’s DIE HARD on a plane (or a boat, a bus, a mountain, etc.). This is the Mad-Libs elevator pitch that launched a thousand films (ooh, DIE HARD on an elevator? I guess DIE HARD had elevators, never mind). Of the “DIE HARD on a …” Continue reading
|Hannah Baxter| In a world where every other movie ends with a blowout fight between gods, superheroes, or both, with nothing less than the fate of the universe hanging in the balance, isn’t it refreshing when you come across a film that knows how to contain itself? Passenger 57 (1992) Continue reading
|Benjamin Jarman| “Image matters most. We have to put on a great show. An eye for an eye. This is the age of the media. The media got us. Now we get back at them.” These are the first lines of dialogue recited by actress Kelly Chen in Johnnie To’s 2004 crime film, Breaking News. Chen Continue reading
| Matthew Tchepikova-Treon | Beyond the hardbody brass hits, kettle drums, soaring guitars, and motoric basslines (that nowadays punctuate every last over-edited theatrical trailer to death), action movie music comes in many forms. In the 1970s, performers like J.J. Johnson (Across 110th Street), Johnny Pate… Continue reading
|Chris Polley| Nine years ago, as is the American way, a viral car commercial brought us all together. Advertising Volvo’s state-of-the-art dynamic steering, it showed a chiseled man in his 50s atop two large trucks, his stance wide and firm, with one foot planted on each of the behemoths’… Continue reading
|Dan Howard| Looking at the history of cinema, I gravitate the most toward the works produced in the golden age of Japanese cinema during the ‘50s and ‘60s. Although I’m not overly fond of Westerns, a lot of samurai films have been heavily influenced by them. Even Akira Kurosawa took… Continue reading
|Azra Thakur| It’s hard to believe Gordon Parks’s Shaft (1971) was released over fifty years ago. Its iconic first scene is still exciting to watch today: from far above, we see John Shaft emerging from a New York City subway staircase to the cold winter outside, set to Isaac Hayes’s… Continue reading
