The Empire of Crime: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
If writers turn terrorist we’ll all be in trouble. Writers such as Richard Condon and Robert Bloch routinely come up with scarier terrorist plots than the ones in real life. …
Category: Movies
Into the Endgame: ‘Infinity War’ Analysis
When constructing a story, especially a visual or acted out story or simply when “breaking story” on a script, you identify the moments you need to hit. “Need” is subjective. But you identify the things you can do in a given moment that would be hard to do later. In this case, the moment you can do with god powers in play is to have Thanos win…
Some olde-tymey movies I’ve had a chance to watch recently
Let’s take a look at a bunch of old movies. Old movies rule!
‘Avengers: Infinity War’ – Spoiler-Free Review
Marvel decided to throw themselves a birthday party, and they invited everybody! Avengers: Infinity War puts the cap on 10 years of Marvel movies and sets the stage for many more to come. Bringing together the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Dr. Strange, Black Panther, and the people of Wakanda to fight the greatest menace the universe has ever faced, the film does an amazing job of juggling multiple intersecting storylines and enough characters to fill a Greyhound bus.
‘Battle Beyond the Stars’ – The ‘Citizen Kane’ of Schlock Sci-fi
When Star Wars exploded on movie screens in 1977, it elevated sci-fi out of the low-budget B-movie ghetto in a way that 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes had tried to do and didn’t quite achieve. While those two films had the spectacular visuals, humanist allegories, and deep thoughts about the meaning of man, they lacked the slam-bang action of a great 1940s Flash Gordon movie. Star Wars showed that people would go for big dumb fun, and the race was on for the next one. In the years that followed, many studios attempted to join the “Me Too” Chorus, with Star Trek grabbing the high-end market and the original Battlestar Galactica locking up the TV audience. The low end was filled with cheesy movies featuring clumsy alien make-up and iffy blue-screen effects. 30-odd years later, one movie stands above them all as the greatest film in the crowded “cheap Star Wars knockoff” genre: ‘Battle Beyond the Stars.’
Thirty-five random thoughts on all four Mad Max movies
When you get the chance to watch all four Mad Max movies over a few days, you have many thoughts. Here are mine!
Masculinity in the Movies
This year has seen a lot of long-overdue discussion of (and action against) sexual harassment, and with it a focus on the “toxic masculinity” that underlies it and other societal ills. In some ways, the world has almost always skewed toward the patriarchy, but there are some elements of the culture that are actually fairly recent developments, which a look back through recent history will serve to illustrate. We’ll start with my central thesis: the modern American model of masculine and feminine roles is a post-World War II invention.