Scorsese And Gangster Cinema Collided For The First Time On Mean Streets

With The Irishman dropping on Netflix streaming this coming Wednesday, now seems like a fine time to look back at the very first time Martin Scorsese directed a gangster picture. Granted, his second feature film, Boxcar Bertha, had heavy crime movie elements to it too, but that was a romantic drama first and foremost. Mean Streets is 110% a gangster crime vehicle, the kind of movie Scorsese would go back to multiple times in his career. Despite being a recurring genre stop for him, Scorsese manages to make sure each of his crime films are different from one another, The Departed is not the exact same movie as Casino, for example.

Fantastic Planet's Animation Evokes Reality While Also Eschewing It

Speaking of animation that doesn't adhere to realism, let's talk about the iconic 1973 French/Czech feature Fantastic Planet. Hailing from director Rene Laloux, Fantastic Planet is a science-fiction tale and like many entries in this genre, Fantastic Planet uses a cosmic setting to create images, creatures and settings with such outlandish qualities that they could only exist in the farthest reaches of outer space. It's no wonder Laloux's trailblazing creation opts to be primarily a visual affair with social commentary sprinkled in instead of hewing to a more traditional three-act story structure. The very concept of a structure of any kind for the narrative would run counter to a visual scheme that's all about the strange and abstract.

The Exorcist Set The Standard For Exorcism Horror Movies For Decades To Come For A Reason

In the last two years, horror films like Get Out, A Quiet Place and especially It have begun to receive the kind of gargantuan box office usually reserved, in the modern era, for massively expensive action blockbusters. It's an impressive achievement but it's far from the first time horror films have managed to secure towering levels of box office glory. In fact, back in 1973, The Exorcist experienced a domestic box office gross that stands at an outstanding $943.3 million when adjusted for inflation and has amassed well over $1 billion in 2018 dollars when factoring in two separate theatrical re-releases. The ninth biggest film of all-time at the domestic box office when adjusted for inflation petrified audiences all around the world back in the day and established exorcisms as a go-to source for scares in horror movies for decades to come.

George Lucas Took Moviegoers For A Spin Through The Past In American Graffiti

George Lucas has become highly synonymous with Star Wars, to the point that he hasn't directed a motion picture that wasn't set in the Star Wars universe in 45 years (this isn't counting how he was apparently the director of reshoots for the Lucasfilm drama Red Tails). But not only did he direct two non-Star Wars movies, his last feature film prior to the original Star Wars was a pop culture behemoth in its own right. That movie was American Graffiti, a dialogue-driven comedy that feels like a precursor to certain Richard Linklater movies like Dazed And Confused, a sharp contrast to the cosmic VFX-heavy productions that Lucas would commit himself to in the years ahead.

The Sting Makes Pulling Off An Entertaining Heist Look Effortless

If there's one ingredient that's crucial to making a proper good heist movie going, it's getting lead actors who are endlessly charismatic, the kind of people who can always keep your attention as they portray morally dubious individuals trying to pull off a big job. Getting Robert Redford and Paul Newman together to headline The Sting means that that pivotal element is already well taken for, these two are thoroughly engaging actors on their own merits and have winning chemistry together. The compulsively watchable lead actor part of the good heist movie equation has been well taken care of and thankfully The Sting manages to give this lead duo plenty to do in the course of pulling off a seemingly impossible heist.

Badlands Proves Terrence Malick Making Inferior Movies Is Nothing New

The 1950's are widely seen as the era where the archetype of American teenager came into its own. And with that archetype came various stereotypes of teenagers that would emerge in media depictions of this age group, namely that of the "bad boy/good girl" dichotomy. Badlands stems from one single idea that is inspired by a true story, which seems to be to take that specific "bad boy/good girl" idea and take it to its most graphic extreme as a way to contrast with the seemingly idyllic vision many carry about the 1950's. White picket fences and automobiles from this era are set against a backdrop of violence and deceit.