Has there ever been a name in filmmaking that went from being the sign of a brilliantly minded young auteur to being synonymous with absolute trash than M. Night Shyamalan? His breakthrough film, The Sixth Sense, was a masterpiece and showed a young filmmaker with an abundance of talent. Slowly but steadily, his abilities seemed…
Waiting for Guffman (1996)
Have you ever noticed that everyone has that one film (or multiple films) that when they are playing on television, you cannot avoid watching them, or a film so great and resonant that you rewatch it often? For me personally, it is not really a singular film that achieves this, but rather a singular director…
Pacific Heights (1990)
I love a good thriller, and nothing is more entertaining than a fantastically trashy psychological thriller. One of the most delightfully campy thrillers I’ve seen recently is Pacific Heights, which is a bizarre film, because despite having one of the most brilliant filmmakers at the helm, and a very talented cast, it is a purely…
Ranking the 88th Academy Award Nominees: Best Actress in a Supporting Role
This year is very concerning for the Supporting categories. The Supporting Actor category is a barren wasteland, and I really don’t care who wins there. However, the Supporting Actress category is also a very strange one because the five nominees are all very good, and are all truly very worthy of winning the Academy Award…
The Firemen’s Ball (1967)
I am not quite sure where I find the time and motivation to watch such bizarre and strange films, but it is certainly a wonderful feeling to watch something weird. Miloš Forman, in my humble opinion, has directed two of the greatest films ever made – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, but…
Macbeth (2015)
There is not any shortage of adaptations of the works of William Shakespeare, and Shakespeare’s plays have the distinction of having been adapted onto film from the earliest days of the silent era to the current modern cinematic age. There are far too many of these adaptations to name here, and spanning between the Western…
The Hateful Eight (2015)
The problem with being a cinephile that also reviews films is that you have such a wide variety of directors that you absolutely adore, and in each review of a film by them, they are suddenly your favorite director, and the one you consider the best working at that time. In the past, I have…
Grandma (2015)
2015 was most certainly the seminal year for veterans actresses having their moment in the spotlight with lead roles in acclaimed films. Charlotte Rampling in 45 Years, Blythe Danner in I’ll See You in My Dreams, Dame Maggie Smith in The Lady in the Van, and perhaps most interestingly, Lily Tomlin in Grandma. I have…
Ranking the 88th Academy Award Nominees: Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Last year, the Best Supporting Actor category was truly one of the strongest of the year, and that is very often the case with this category. For the first time in my career of watching and following the Academy Awards, I have not seen this category be quite as weak as it is this year….
Spotlight (2015)
How do I begin this review? I think a film about any form of investigation, whether by the police or by journalists, are bound to be fascinating. I have always been very interested in films that showed an investigation taking place, and I was fascinated by the concept of the film Spotlight, which told the…
The Postmodern Pelican 