For some, it’s a professional duty. For others, it’s a journey into the unknown. It can be a voyage beyond one’s experience or merely a means of getting from Point A to Point B. Indeed, we love to differentiate various forms of travel, from business trips to “holidays,” destinations as diverse as a jog down […]
Category: Commentary
The 10 Best TV to Film Adaptations of All Time
When it first hit homes in America, Hollywood felt no significant threat from television. After all, would viewers really reject the theatrical experience to see their favorite films projected on a “big, enormous, 12 inch screen?” The answer quickly became “yes,” as TV took the country by storm. It wasn’t long before Tinseltown was crafting all […]
The 10 Best Films About “Real” Rock Acts
Over the Summer, Clint Eastwood (the first name you think of when it comes to either rock ‘n’ roll or musicals) took the Broadway smash Jersey Boys and turned it into something akin to Goodfellas with pop songs, with only the tunes living up to Frankie Valle and the Four Season’s original legacy. Indeed, most […]
The 10 Best Movie Hitmen (and Women) of All Time
They’re cool and calculating, ruthless and heartless. They can charm as well as harm you. When our government employs them, it’s usually as part of a Black Ops thing. For everyone else, they’re muscle to make the point in hollow tipped exclamations. In the vernacular, they’re called hitmen (and women). In the film game, they’re the […]
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The 10 Best Vampire Movies of All Time
Before Anne Rice romanticized them (and Stephenie Meyer took that “endless” love element and ran with it), vampires were terrifying. They were frightening creatures who sucked the blood of humans, leaving an undead apocalypse (and many more hungry neckbiters) in their wake. Connected to other “children of the night,” they became myth and legend and […]
The 10 Greatest Bible Epics of All Time
Back in the days before the post-modern movement, Hollywood loved to get holier than thou (literally speaking). From its earliest silent days to the time right before Modernism took over, the Bible was milked for as many movie subjects and stories as possible. Granted, some contemporary filmmakers have found audience favor in going with the Gospel […]
The Top 10 Female Action Heroes of All Time
Whenever we think of action heroes, we automatically assume that someone is a male. That’s because, all throughout the history of the genre, Hollywood has had a problem with putting the outdated notion of “the fairer sex” in harm’s way. It took the exploitation industry and its drive-in dynamic to allow ladies to fight like men, […]
The 10 Best Man vs. Animal Films of All Time
Currently, two cinematic forces are conspiring to overthrow man as the dominate species on the planet. One is a bunch of bombastic giant robots (irrelevant for our purposes here). The other is a group of scientifically-smartened apes. With both Transformers: Age of Extinction and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes ruling the summer 2014 […]
The 10 Best Films About Demonic Possession
Some of our simplest stories are based on the age old idea of ephemeral good vs. tactile evil. Indeed, such broad, basic turns allow complexity to be cleared away, turning everything into a battle between God and Satan. In modern filmmaking, many such cautionary tales have been transformed into intense dramas or straight-ahead scarefests, usually […]
The 10 Best Cameos of All Time
More often than not, they’re a professional favor, one A-lister helping out another during a relatively high profile project. In other cases, they’re sly in-jokes for the audience, the sudden appearance of a known celebrity distracting from the storyline to supply its own unique brand of amusement. Cameos are not a new thing, but it was […]
10 Movies We Know We Saw But Have No Idea What They’re About Anymore
We critics see hundreds of movies a year, on average about two a week for a total well over 100 (though there are some of us who truly suffer for our art, reviewing DVDs and Blu-ray releases, pushing the number beyond 300). During that time, we do a pretty good job of storing those cinematic experiences […]
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The 10 Best Films That Break “The Fourth Wall”
They call it “breaking the fourth wall,” a term derived from the stage where the audience, and their perspective on a play or production, became the last barrier between the characters and their self-contained, three-sided set world. It differs from straight narration, and yet, it’s really the same thing. Instead of eavesdropping into a kitchen […]
The 10 Best Films About “Twins”
They say that, somewhere in the world, everyone has an exact double. It’s called the legend of the doppelganger, and supposedly, if you run into your other self, dark and diabolical things will happen. Hollywood also seems to believe in this concept. From the earliest days of the silent era to recent turns such as […]
The 10 Best Giant Monster Movies of All Time
Godzilla rebooted? They tried once in 1998. The results were less than spectacular. Of course, when you put Dean Devlin and director Roland Emmerich on the job of bringing a beloved Japanese icon to Western eyes, what did you really expect? Quality? Now Hollywood has returned with another take on that famous oversized lizard, Godzilla, […]
The 10 Best Films About the Con Game
Toward the end of their final show as a band, Johnny “Rotten” Lydon of the British bad boys Sex Pistols screamed at an unappreciative audience the following beleaguered battle cry: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” He was speaking both realistically (the band was awful that night) as well as metaphorically, since most of […]
The 10 Best Films About the Music Industry
Everybody hopes to be famous — or if not famous, at least capable of living like those in the limelight. Some strive for big/small screen adulation, while others take to the page or the stage for their success. Then there are those who pick up a guitar, or sit behind a keyboard, and explain themselves […]
The 10 Best Films About Drugs
They can fuel the senses and dull the imagination. Or maybe it’s the other way around. No matter your position on them — morally or otherwise — there is no denying that drugs have become a staple of cinematic storytelling. Their use, the addiction to them, and the resulting fallout, has fueled hundreds of successful […]
The 10 Best Films About Sex
It’s still a taboo subject, even in an era of so called freedoms and contemporized morality. Whenever the issue comes up, some scream “think of the children” and prudes produce proof that all life’s issues stem from and struggle with its carnal components. Yes, sex is still a four letter word, especially in the movies, […]
The Top 10 Movies of 2013
You know what? There were a lot of really good movies in 2013 — which makes the inaugural installment of Film Racket’s Top 10 Movies feature all the more fun. Usually, we critics are hard-pressed to pull out 10 films we truly loved. Normally you end up with five solid winners and five movies you […]
The Top 10 Films About Cars of All Time
For those of us living in America, there’s no denying the influence of the car and car culture on our everyday existence. We live and breathe our automobiles, fixating on them like legitimate members of our family. We wash and wax them, modify and remake them. We complain when they fail mechanically and wail even […]