What's Up, Doc? Is a Hysterical Tribute to Screwball Comedies

Filmmakers are versatile artists. Us film critics (and I'm as guilty of it as anybody) sometimes like to box in directors into a certain type. Martin Scorsese only does gangster movies, Richard Linklater only does slice-of-life indies, Akira Kurosawa only does jidaigeki pictures. In reality, these three filmmakers, and really any director, are usually capable of making far more than just one type of movie. You know who serves as a great example of the elasticity of a filmmaker? Director Peter Bogdanovich. Back in 1971, he did a relentlessly bleak portrait of a suffocating small town entitled The Last Picture Show. After such a grim motion picture, its no surprise he opted for something lighter for his directorial follow-up.

Werner Herzog's 1973 Feature Aguirre, the Wrath of God Is A Masterclass In Cinematic Minimalism

Though I had never watched a Werner Herzog directed movie prior to seeing Aguirre: The Wrath of God, I've been well aware of Herzog's reputation as a filmmaker who takes on harrowing material who speaks in a distinctive German-accented voice and has a devout love for the art of cinema. The high level of acclaim his works have received makes it difficult not to be aware of his impact on the world of movies, though his enjoyable appearances on programs like Rick & Morty and Parks & Recreation also helped ensure he was on my radar and his presence on my mind has only further increased having now seen what an outstanding achievement in filmmaking his third feature Aguirre, the Wrath of God is.

No Easy Answers to Brutal Questions Can Be Found In Munich

Back in 2005, Steven Spielberg delivered two motion pictures that managed to crystallize different aspects of how 9/11 impacted America. The first, War Of The Worlds, was a harrowing motion picture that managed to capture just what it was like to be an ordinary American citizen that suddenly found themselves thrust into the middle of an attack larger than anything they could have imagined. Six months after War Of The Worlds, Spielberg's second directorial effort of the year would arrive in the form of Munich, which paralleled real-life events from the 1970's to the morally shady (at best) the American government was responding to the 9/11 attacks.

Douglas Laman Gets A Tune-Up (Entry #4): The Rise and Fall Of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

DOUGLAS LAMAN GETS A TUNE-UP

ENTRY #4: The Rise and Fall Of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars by David Bowie

Douglas Laman Gets A Tune-Up is a new weekly series wherein Douglas Laman listens to an album of music he's never fully listened to before (though he may have heard one or two songs from it) and writes up his brief thoughts on it.

There have been a lot of great artists. There have been a lot of artists who emotionally connected with people. But no singular individual has had such a profound impact on the world like David Bowie did. Here was a guy that wasn't content to sit inside the box in any aspect of his life whether it was his sexuality, conforming to gender norms or his catalog of music, the cornerstone of his entire career. His tunes communicated a sense of pulsating rebelliousness, an inability to conform to the norms that matched perfectly with the man belting out such songs. Want a classic example of that iconic spirit? Look no further than his 1972 album The Rise and Fall Of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

Liza Minnelli And Bob Fosse Joins Forces For Thoughtful Musical Fare In Cabaret

The idea of Liza Minelli and the late great Bob Fosse teaming up feels like as natural a pairing as peanut butter and jelly or dogs and cuteness or Donald Trump and racism. EGOT winner Liza Minnelli most certainly knows her way around a musical number while you'd be hard pressed to find individuals in American pop culture from any era more adept at the art of dancing than Mr. Bob Fosse, whose knowledge of how to pull off the most exquisite dance moves seemed to come as naturally to him as breathing air. Such a promising pairing came to pass in the 1972 musical drama Cabaret, which also managed to rope in Michael York into the proceedings.

A Clockwork Orange Review (Classic Write-Up)

One of the numerous elements of Stanley Kubricks films that has endured as a staple of cinematic discussion is the lofty ideas and themes present in his motion pictures. 2011: A Space Odyssey charted out the history of mankind while taking the fears that many in the 1960's had of newfound technology and personifying those fears into HAL. Dr. Strangelove hinges its entire plot on Cold War paranoia, and then came his 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, which tackles ideas related to politics as well as the concept of free will.