Scream Is A Frighteningly Sharp-Witted Take On Slasher Movies

Scream was to slasher movies what Deadpool was to superhero movies. That may sound like the headline to some ill-fated Hot Take that ends up getting dragged all over Twitter, but it seems to make total sense to me, the guy who absolutely nailed the ending of His Girl Friday. Both Scream and Deadpool were attempting to tweak the noses of their respective subgenres, but neither were explicitly deconstructions of those subgenres thanks to how frequently they still indulged in well-known tropes of that subgenre, albeit in a self-aware manner. Thankfully, there's more than just a snarky self-aware streak in Scream, which has held up quite well in the more than two decades since its initial release.

An Inability To Lend Depth To Its Hefty Themes Hurts Courage Under Fire

Given how hesitant American moviegoers seem to be in terms of embracing foreign cinema, I'm thoroughly pleased with the notable ways Akira Kurosawa has impacted mainstream American cinema. Seven Samurai has been remade in an American context multiple times while his motion picture Rashamon has become the default example for a piece of storytelling involving multiple people offering different versions of how a certain chain of events occurred. It looks like Rashamon was a primary source of inspiration for the 1996 Edward Zwick directed Denzel Washington vehicle Courage Under Fire just by taking a gaze at its basic story.

Insightful Writing And Audacious Filmmaking Combine For Wong Kar-Wai's Excellent Chungking Express

That old turn of phrase "There's more than one way to skin a cat" is...a really disturbing colloquialism if one stops to think about it for even a second. Why were people skinning cats back in the era in which that saying was conceived?? Those poor kitties! Anywho, while that expression is certainly creepy, it does get a larger truth, which is that there's more than one way to accomplish a certain task. For instance, in the world of small-scale dialogue-oriented character dramas, you can execute such a type of story in a number of ways. You could go about it in a fully naturalistic approach, which has served the likes of Richard Linklater and Yasujiro Ozu immensely well with a number of their best works.

The 2008 Stage Version Of Rent Shows Why This Gut-Wrenching Musical Has Endured For So Long

It's interesting to me how a large amount of art can be dubbed both timely to the specific period it premiered in and timeless in the types of emotions and characters it grapples with. Rent, a Broadway musical penned by Jonathan Larson, is very much one such production, with its story chronicling the experiences of eight adults in their early twenties grappling with financial insecurity and the AIDS crisis being very much something that resonated powerfully with audiences in the mid-1990's. For decades at that point, the AIDS crisis had ravaged the LGBTQA community and instead of creating more empathy for members of this community, individuals like former President Ronald Reagan only made those suffering from AIDS and the LGBTQA community itself even more of a pariah in American society than it already was. 

Before He Had The High Ground, Ewan McGregor Was Doing Tremendous Acting In The Bleak Classic Trainspotting

Little did avid moviegoers in the 1990's realize how many of the movies they were watching from then unknown filmmakers would turn out to be the start of careers that would forever change the face of cinema. The early part of this decade had the likes of Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino all leap onto the silver screen and immediately leave their mark on the artform they loved in a way that is still being felt and influencing new filmmakers today. Lest you think all the early films from soon-to-be prolific filmmakers were limited to the early days of this decade, one of the middle years of this decade (1996) delivered the first movie from Wes Anderson and the second feature film from one Danny Boyle.

Bottle Rocket Review (Classic Write-Up)

Recent years have been kind to American auteur filmmaker/genius Wes Anderson. Merging his unique visual aesthetic with introspective themes and emotional content has made his last three films among the best of the still young century. My adoration of the man's work meant I carried a large amount of interest in watching his very first feature film, Bottle Rocket. This 1996 feature film debut for Anderson was an expansion on an earlier short film subject of the same name that also starred the two leading men of this film, Luke Wilson and Owen Wilson, two actors (most notably Owen, who, along with Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray, ended up becoming the Leonardo DiCaprio to Wes Anderson's Martin Scorsese) who would become staples of Andersons future work.

Mission: Impossible Review (Classic Write-Up)

19 years later, Paramounts epic spy franchise Mission: Impossible is not only still around, it's in the best shape of its life. The last film, Ghost Protocol, was only the second entry to make over $200 million domestically and became the highest grossing picture in the saga on a worldwide box office basis. And to think it all started with the 1996 feature promptly titled Mission: Impossible, which would become the only movie in Tom Cruises career that would get a sequel (though Jack Reacher is likely to become the only other movie of his to get a follow-up).

The Big Lebowski Review (Classic Write-Up)

Dude, Where's My Car...And The Money...And My Tapes

Narration is a common element found in cinema that's frequently utilized for numerous purposes. Perhaps the goal of the narration is to set up the tone of the motion picture, or to deliver exposition or even just to set up a joke. The Big Lewboski uses narration as a way to accomplish that first objective, with Sam Elliots distinctive vocals describing the landscape of  Los Angeles and the films main character, The Dude (Jeff Bridges), though eventually his narration disintegrates into him losing his train of thought.

The Rock Review (Classic Write-Up)

Rock N' Roll All Night

Watching The Rock is like stepping into some kind of super warped time machine, one that takes it's viewer into the wonderful world of 1996. Here is an age where Michael Bay was a promising director coming off the previous years hit Bad Boys, and was making easily his most audacious project yet; The Rock, an action feature that has Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery teaming up to take down Ed Harris, who has taken the entire facility of Alcatraz (it's also referred to as, cue dramatic music, THE ROCK) hostage. Oh, and did I mention the villain has numerous deadly bombs with him?

I Wanna See That!: Space Jam

I find it weird that Sylvester got to be on this CD cover and not Daffy.

In this Thursday fixture, I Wanna See That!, I take a look at specific trailers that are both well crafted and have some kind of importance to them beyond just informing you a film is coming soon. This week, welcome to the jam as I start my epic coverage of the 1990's film Space Jam by taking a look at its trailer.

Franchise Frenzy: The Lion King

I Ain't Lion...That First Movies Still Amazing (The Sequels? Weeellllll.....)

Gives ya chills, don't it?

Disney is pretty much the reason why I love not only the art of animation, but cinema in general. Their movies were ones I rewatched endlessly, to the point where even today even the mention of key words like "necessities" and "world" are likely to cause me to burst into a Disney song. One of my favorites of the bunch was easily The Lion King, a movie released only a year and a half before I was born, and (something I didn't realize until I actually started writing this article) one that came out twenty years ago this week. Who can believe it's been twenty years since moviegoers were enthralled by the Circle of Life? Even today, the movie has a tremendous presence in pop culture, to the point where a new sequel TV series entitled The Lion Guard was announced last week.