Kurt Russell Solidifies His Action Movie Bona Fidas with Escape from New York

You gotta love it when movie poster taglines so succinctly sum up the premise of the film they're advertising. "Breaking out is impossible. Breaking in is insane." Yes, that'll do nicely for accurately summing up the stakes of John Carpenter's Escape from New York. This feature takes place in the then-far off time of 1997. All of America's most dangerous criminals have been contained in one expansive prison: New York City. Yes, the Big Apple is now rotten to the core as it's been converted into a place for criminals. You know who just landed in NYC? The President of the United States (Donald Pleasence). Air Force One crashed into New York and now the President has been taken hostage by somebody in NYC.

A Wistful Take On Life Is Beautifully Realized In Lucky

Some of my favorite movies ever are simply laid-back movies following a normal human being going about their lives over the course of a few days. When you do those type of films right, you get something just so riveting, a cinematic replication of either the world we live in everyday or a glimpse into an authentic portrait of a world we're unfamiliar with. Want a great recent example of this strain of cinema done well? Look at Lucky, a small-scale dialogue-driven drama that serves as both a star vehicle for the late great character actor Harry Dean Stanton as well as the directorial debut for John Carroll Lynch.