For some people, fame is like a drug, and their desire to attain it becomes the driving force of their lives. This has been the case for a very long time, but it seems to have reached a sort of fevered pitch in the modern era. The rise of “reality television” would seem to bear this out. Indeed, for over […]
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Part of the brilliance of director Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) is the way in which it demystifies space travel. His characters aren’t heroic astronauts or brilliant scientists or mystic space knights. Instead, they are blue-collar working stiffs who just happen to make their living on a mining ship that traverses the stars. It is a clever (if not wholly original) […]
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With Halloween right around the corner, it seemed like a good time to take a look at two films that not only redefined the horror genre, but also had a lasting impact on the culture as a whole. Director Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962) has developed a strong cult following in the years since its release, but it is […]
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Carol Burnett once said “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” What she meant is that anything can be considered funny given enough time and distance. George Carlin agreed with her to a point. He believed that everything could be considered funny, and it didn’t matter how much time had passed. His contention was that “It all depends on how you construct […]
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Stories that follow the traditional “hero’s journey” template are often geared toward adolescent boys, and feature easily identifiable male characters in the lead role. Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and countless other properties can be placed into this rather broad category, and they all tend to reinforce the notion of the young male protagonist as champion or […]
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Director Alfonso Cuarón’s dystopian fable Children of Men (2006) is a veritable master class in the art of modern filmmaking, and nearly any moment in the film would be worthy of inclusion in this column. However, the sequence that towers above them all, and serves as the focus of this installment, comes late in the film, and depicts a rare […]
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One of the finest arts one can learn and do well is acting. To be believable in a role, one must put oneself into a role totally and completely. It has to be something the audience will buy, right? There is a right way to cry, to laugh, to fall, and to get punched in the face. If a punch […]
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From the earliest days of cinema, filmmakers have long been fascinated by the often contentious relationship that exists between Mankind and nature. Indeed, one simply has to look at director Robert J. Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) for an early example of this, as it perfectly illustrates the give and take relationship we share with the natural world. Since […]
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It happens almost every time a movie comes out; “The book was better.” Often the change from one medium to another is at best mixed, and even more often lackluster. This is understandable, books go into far more depth and spend far more time building characters and plots and some of that is simply lost when it moves to film. […]
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It has been said that film has the ability to transport us. Whether it be to far off lands, other worlds, worlds that do not exist, or the distant past, films can take viewers to places they’ve never been before, or to places they could never visit in real life. However, nothing has the ability to transport a person back […]
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