When it’s time to round up thoughts on 12 months of movies, where do you start? Anyone can make a list of favorites – after 25 of these, I’m proof. But there’s a desire to seek a larger context, to find common themes. Similarities across an art form can reveal a shared cultural moment, a […]
Category: Commentary
The Top 10 Movies of 2021
2021 was The Year that New Movies Were Everywhere. Back in theaters. Premiering on Netflix. Streaming on HBO Max, a notable evolution that synced at-home WB releases with theatrical showings for 30 days. The moviegoing experience used to involve picking a movie and a moviehouse in which to see it (and snack selections, of course). […]
The Top 10 Movies of 2020
In any recap of 2020, what can one say that hasn’t already been said? The ongoing global dissection of the year’s internal stresses, external vitriol, and painful events put escapism at a premium — the kind of mental getaway that movies often provide. But with theaters closed, or almost universally avoided, where does that attempt […]
Interview: Soundwave Director Dylan Narang
Writer-director Dylan Narang came to the film business by way of a stint in military counter-intelligence and an MBA from Georgetown, before attending film school at Chapman University and making his feature debut with the 2016 horror movie All I Need. His latest film is the sci-fi thriller Soundwave, starring Hunter Doohan as Ben Boyles, […]
The Top 10 Movies of 2015
What turned out to be a surprisingly good year for movies has re-opened one big question in earnest: Can Hollywood make blockbusters that are also bona fide award-worthy candidates? In 2015 at least, that answer is yes. You’ll find our top ten lists below stuffed with mega-budget pics, including The Martian, Mad Max: Fury Road, and a […]
The 10 Best Time Travel Films of All Time
It’s one of sci-fi’s most popular go-to narratives. Whenever a story needs a boost, or a plot requires a trick that traditional reality can’t pull off, the space-time continuum becomes the back-up plan. Characters in trouble? Send them back in time. The circumstances are headed for untold disaster? A journey backward of forward should calm […]
The 10 Best “Presidents in Peril” Films of All Time
He’s the Head of the Executive Branch, one part of the three-pronged checks and balances that keeps our fragile democracy afloat. He (and potentially, she) is often called the most Powerful Leader in the Free World, the Commander in Chief, and/or the POTUS. In any language, he (or she) is the President of these United […]
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The 10 Best Films About Dinosaurs
They’re our first fascination, their images filling our preschool and kindergarten minds with the kind of “what if” worship that only something this scientifically fanciful can produce. As time goes on, we lose our love of these prehistoric placeholders, instead finding our minds manufacturing monsters much more meaningful to our daily lives. Still, dinosaurs are […]
The 10 Best Disaster Films of All Time
Filmmakers love to play “what if?,” from small scale inquiries (“What if a mismatched couple falls in love?”) to large scale questions (“What if aliens invaded the Earth?”). It’s a basic building block for emotion, or in most cases, eye candy. Indeed, the disaster film, based around the idea that out world could be wiped […]
10 Literary Classics That Should Be Made Into Movies
Ever since the film medium began, it borrowed from other established artforms for inspiration. It used the opera and its operetta cousins as cinematic sources. It adapted plays and standard musicals. Perhaps most importantly, it scoured through hundreds of established literary classics to give their upstart creative outlet some much needed gravitas (even if they […]
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10 Superheroes Who Need Their Own Franchise
With the second assembling of the Avengers now in theaters, they’re banking on the same billion dollars plus the first film delivered some three years ago. Since then, the comic book genre has exploded, with films planned from both frontrunner Marvel and chief rival DC for the next eight years (or more). This summer we’ll get […]
The 10 Best Films About Hollywood
It’s sometimes referred to as the Land of Dreams. It can also be a hell hole of untold personal and professional nightmares. Still, hundreds of hungry wannabes head west every day, hoping that somewhere within the Matrix-like maze of Hollywood they can find a bit more than their 15 minutes of (usually local) fame. It’s […]
The 10 Best Third Films in Cinematic Trilogies
Trilogies used to be simple. One series, three films, no fuss, no muss. Now, we’ve become addicted to the bountiful box office tendencies of the cinematic type, taking the last installment in said triptychs and turning them into two part cash grabs. There are also times when the standard three-parter (Night of the Living Dead, […]
The 10 Best Musicals of All Time
They got their start in the revue, the singing and dancing entertainment option that eventually gave way to vaudeville. Around the turn of the century, they stopped focusing solely on the music and brought more story and character into the mix. By the dawn of the jazz age, the musical was in full swing, and […]
The 10 Most Eccentric Movie Eccentrics
He’s constantly chided for playing weird characters (his latest being an art dealer detective dork in Mortdecai), but Johnny Depp hasn’t cornered the market on eccentrics. In fact, he’s only been “unusual” in about half his films. The rest of the time he plays regular people placed in unusual circumstances or situations. Of course, the […]
The 10 Best High Tech Thrillers of All Time
Everything seemed to be going well in the Hollywood universe until The Interview. Even with an announcement months before about the Seth Rogen/James Franco comedy set inside North Korea (and revolving around killing its dictatorial leader), no one could have expected that its studio, Sony, would suffer from one of the most embarrassing hacks ever. […]
Liam Neeson’s 10 Best “Action” Films
He first came to prominence way back in the mid ’70s as an actor in his native Ireland. Now, nearly 45 years later, he’s seen the third installment in his film franchise, Taken 3, top the box office once again. At one time, he was considered a serious actor with prestige pictures in his creative […]
The Top 10 Movies of 2014
This year we had robot aliens, raccoon aliens, tentacled aliens, and hot chick aliens. We had fever dreams, snowbound train trips, and long walks of self-discovery. We had a kid growing up and two aging adults dumbing it down for a second time. We had movies about movies. We had movies about LEGO. There was […]
The 10 Most Unusual Holiday Films of All Time
It’s Christmastime, that moment once a year where we pretend to practice peace on Earth and goodwill towards all mankind by binge-eating the wrong foods and smothering the rest of our woes in endless glasses of booze-spiked eggnog. Sure, it’s also the season for Hanukkah, Bodhi Day, and Kwanzaa, but most of the merriment centers […]
The 10 Worst Movie Musicals of All Time
It began with the revue, became even more memorable in both vaudeville and burlesque. At the turn of the last century, it was nothing more than a series of songs strung together. By the 1930s, it had morphed into a magical American artform. Indeed, the musical may seem like the offspring of the operetta and […]