Maurice Contrasts Societal-Ingrained Loneliness With Romantic Unity

Maurice begins on a highly amusing note. An eleven-year-old version of the titular protagonist is talking with a schoolteacher on the beach. The teacher begins to explain to the youngster that he's about to underdog the process of puberty. To illustrate this point, the schoolteacher proceeds to grab a stick and use it to make a variety of drawings of human genitalia in the sand. Now he's got a visual aid for his overall point. After their conversation, the two characters begin to walk away only for Maurice to realize that the drawings are still etched into the sand. Just as the schoolteacher hopes the tide has washed them away, a family comes upon the doodles and becomes aghast.

13 Days of First-Time Frights: Near Dark Review

13 Days of First-Time Frights is a series of reviews for October 2019 where Douglas Laman, in the spirit of Halloween, watches and writes about thirteen horror movies he's never seen before. These reviews will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday as well as the last three Wednesdays of October 2019.

Entry #11: Near Dark

She's most well-known in the modern era for the kind of gritty dramas that led her to become the first woman ever to direct a Best Picture-winning movie (not to mention becoming the first woman to win Best Director), Kathryn Bigelow got her start as a filmmaker in the world of genre cinema. Thrillers, science-fiction fare, cop dramas, Bigelow did it all and in the process created a number of iconic movies, including Point Break. Her second ever directorial effort was Near Dark, a vampire Western horror film that also stands as one of her most stylized features even among her unabashedly over-the-top genre movie repertoire.

Broadcast News Isn't Quite The Sum of Its Entertaining Parts

You ever finish watching a beloved movie for the first time and suddenly find yourself stuck with the feeling of recognizing you enjoyed it but also wished you had liked it more? I encountered such a sensation after finishing Broadcast News for the first time, a classic James L. Brooks romantic-comedy from 1987 that numerous people claim to be the apex of Brooks' entire career. It's certainly leagues ahead of his 2010 dud How Do You Know and a highly charming feature overall with some exceptional performances, but I walked away from Broadcast News feeling satisfied but not truly enamored with what I had just seen.

Predator Uses Sharp Writing To Make It Such An Absorbing Feature

Predator and Alien have been intertwined for decades now, with a handful of Alien vs. Predator comics released through 1989 and 1990 introducing the concept to the world and the appearance of a Xenomorph skull in Predator 2 solidifying this connection forevermore. Interestingly though, there's something pretty important that connects these two science-fiction franchises beyond just them sharing two cross-over movies together. Both Alien and Predator kicked off their individual sagas with small-scale adventures that heavily kept the titular alien organisms off-screen for much of the runtime. This decision led to Alien being one of the all-time best horror movies while it led to Predator being a smarter than expected action film.

Tampopo Cooks Up A Highly Entertaining Time

"Anyone Can Cook", as one of the most famous movie chefs once said, and that extends to widows who now own a small ramen noodle joint and are also the lead character of the Juzo Itami motion picture Tampopo. This joint is where Goro (Tsutomu Yamazaki) and Gun (Ken Watanabe) end up stopping for a quick to bite to eat while working only to discover a shop in dissaray that could use some help fulfilling it's full potential. Running this eatery is single mother Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto), a lady who is fully committed to doing whatever it takes to making her ramen noodle shop something special. Though Goro is hesitant to the idea at first, Tampopo is able to convince him that he can use his culinary expertise to help her improve substantially as a cook.

Evil Dead II Thrusts Tons Of Crazy Well-Crafted Scares On The Audience

If you thought Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) had already been through hell watching all of his friends and his girlfriend get killed by demonic spirits in the first Evil Dead movie, just wait until you see how Evil Dead II puts this character through the wringer. Continuing right where the first one left off, Ash is trapped in the forest where that fateful cabin he and his friends got trapped in resides with there being no way to escape. He's stuck here with these Candarian Demons, who are bent on messing with his mind and eventually devouring him. Just because Ash is up against formidable supernatural forces though doesn't mean this guy is about to go down without a fight.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days Is A Magnificent Tale Of Maintaining Individualism In The Face Of Oppression

For a good chunk of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, there is no indication where exactly lead character Otilla (Anamaria Marinca) is going or what she's trying to do. She and her roommate Gabriela Dragut (Laura Vasillu) reside in a Romanian town in the year 1987, meaning they live under a heavily-controlling government, which explains why Otilla is acting so sneaky in her day-to-day actions as she attempts to purchase cigarettes from her neighbor as well as try and meet up with a mysterious man by the name of Viarel Bebe (Vlad Ivanov). She and Dragut are supposed to meet this individual at a hotel later for important reasons that their inherently more secretive nature prevents them from talking about openly.

I Have More Than A Suspicion About What Went Wrong With Suspect

The elders of this world speak of a bygone era, one in which video game arcades were the hottest places to go, Donald Trump was a rich white nationalist instead of a white nationalist with nukes by his side and Creed had yet to become a band. This era was called the 1980's and it was here that a singer by the name of Cher made a run at being a movie star in a number of high-profile films including Mask, Silkwood and Moonstruck. Since then, her presence as an actor in the world of cinema has been limited to just a lead role in Burlesque and voice-over work in Zookeeper but there was a time in the 1980s where she a regular fixture of the silver screen, starring in films like the 1987 courtroom thriller Suspect.

Full Metal Jacket Review (Classic Write-Up)

In the early 1960's, Stanley Kubrick created one of the definitive cinematic re-tellings of the Cold War in his farcical comedy Dr. Strangelove. Apparently, the potential world-shaping real-life events could have in terms of storytelling never left Kubrick's mind as 23 years later Full Metal Jacket was released. This time, the actual events that inspired this Stanley Kubrick movie was the two-decade long Vietnam War that basically impacted every aspect of American life you can imagine. How the news impacts people's perception of foreign affairs, the mainstream consensus of the military complexity, hell, the hippie movement in the 1960's, all were spurred on by the Vietnam War.

Raising Arizona Was An Early Hilarious Coen Brothers Effort

Sometimes, diving into the early parts of a well-known filmmakers catalog reveals movies far different from later efforts. Perhaps themes explored in a director's early work contrast with ideas presented in said director's newer pieces of cinema. For the Coen Brothers, Raising Arizona (their second feature film effort ever) certainly fits snuggly into their body of work. Oh sure, the duo would certainly go on to investigate heftier themes and concepts in far darker modern-day classics like No Country For Old Men and A Serious Man.

RoboCop Review (Classic Write-Up)

A year and a half after its release, the 2014 RoboCop remake has pretty much vanished from the public consensus, its reception neither being good enough to justify its existence nor bad enough to make it the sort of blockbuster catastrophe whose flaws one can't help but ponder. Instead, it got mixed marks from critics and audiences and bombed at the domestic box office while grossing a great $184 million internationally.

So, I Was On Netflix: Dirty Dancing Review

Talk Dancing To Me (Cue Saxophone Solo) 

ROADHOUSE

Each Tuesday I review a film that can be found on Netflix Instant Streaming. This week, Patrick Swayze teaches dancing....or should I say, teaches Dirty Dancing.

Every decade has its movies that have earned a place within cinema as some of the greats. Surprisingly, there's actually tons from each respective era that can be called truly exemplary, but it seems that the ones that have gotten the most attention in recent years are the ones from the 80's. While it hasn't gotten a remake like The Karate Kid (interestingly, Lionsgate scheduled one for a July 26th, 2013 date that never came to pass), the 1987 smash hit Dirty Dancing has still endured as a popular movie over the years. After finally seeing it, I'm struggling to truly figure out why.