Jan07

Take 5 — At Year’s End 2012

Five writers. Five looks at the five best films. Five number ones. Boy, are we inconsistent.

 

 

Daniel Day Lewis and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are arguably the two best actors in Hollywood right now. We discuss their merits.

 

 

Aug28

Take 5: Biopics

As we await the premieres of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” and Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” we discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of the biopic genre.

 

 

(Take 5 is a recurring column in which we gather up five of our favorite Movies About Gladiators contributors and ask them a few questions about cinema. This edition is extra special because we have six people answering. Below are their responses.) 1. Why is it seemingly so difficult to make a successful trilogy? Dustin Freeley: For […]

 

 

Question 1: One trope that recurs rather often in movies — and sometimes justifies the perpetuation of a franchise — is the car chase. Overall, what is the mass appeal of the car chase? Tim Adkins: I’ll borrow a line from the late great Fresh Prince of Bel Air: “Drive fast. Speed turns me on.” It’s just […]

 

 

Forty years ago, on March 14, The Godfather premiered in New York City. The two hour film began what would become a veritable epic about a world-weary don and his favored son, both of whom try to hold their families together in a turbulent world ripe with war, politics, power struggles, and resentment. Based on the novel […]

 

 

Question 1: What’s the state of the American horror film?  Steve Barker: There are two popular formulas in horror right now: the super gory torture movies (Saw, Hostel) and the documentary style where things pop out at unexpected moments and scare the shit out of the audience (Paranormal Activity, Apollo 18). Neither of these forums is all that original. […]

 

 

If 2011 was the year of the sequel, 2012 is set to rival that moniker with additional superhero franchise installments. Most notably is the uber-anticipated Dark Knight Rises, followed at a distance by The Amazing Spiderman and The Avengers. I’m sure Hollywood is also destined to bombard us with a handful of underground super movies that follow […]

 

 

As of this past weekend, Liam Neeson’s string of box office successes is still in tact as The Grey comes in on top with about twenty million dollars in ticket sales. This pales a bit in comparison to his recent early-year windfalls with Taken and Unknown, but it’s still a testamnent to how much people dig Liam Neeson, […]

 

 

So, in yet another film that has been “inspired by a true story” (OED definition: adj. vaguely related to something that happened to someone at some time, somewhere, while pondering something else), Universal Studios is releasing Big Miracle on February 7th. Starring Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski, Big Miracle relays the tale of three whales trapped by […]