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Larger Than Life (1996, Howard Franklin)
Larger Than Life is a different film today than it was ten years ago–back then, I remember, it was a big deal Matthew McConaughey starred in the film. There were reshoots to add more of him. Today, the...
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The Oh in Ohio (2006, Billy Kent)
Short movies–under ninety minutes–are having a creative resurgence of late. I’m thinking primarily of Ed Burns’s Looking for Kitty as the model (and it was well under ninety), but The Oh in Ohio is...
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The Thing (1982, John Carpenter)
I always say John Carpenter needs to direct something else, something non-genre. A romantic comedy perhaps or a family drama. I guess it never occurred to me, but with The Thing, Carpenter is directing...
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Volcano (1997, Mick Jackson)
I’m trying to remember why I queued Volcano. I’ve recently been on a “rediscovering the mid-to-late 1990s” kick, so that reason is possible, but I’m pretty sure it was because Anne Heche was in it and...
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Against the Dark (2009, Richard Crudo)
Leave it to Steven Seagal to make a boring vampire movie. Worse, it’s not even the traditional vampires; instead, it’s the zombies from 28 Days Later… only they’re vampires here—Against the Dark is...
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Meet Monica Velour (2010, Keith Bearden)
In the listless younger man, experienced older woman genre, Meet Monica Velour is a painfully obvious modernization (the older woman is a former porn star, the younger man is an… avid fan). I use the...
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Clockers (1995, Spike Lee)
Clockers opens with actual crime scene photos juxtaposed against filmed sequences of a crowd gathering to watch as the police arrive. Lee is dealing with a lot in the film and opening with that...
View ArticleThey Live (1988, John Carpenter)
Maybe a third of They Live is amazing. The film has three distinct parts. The first, where Roddy Piper arrives in L.A.–Piper never gets a name and L.A. never gets identified, though director Carpenter...
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Marked for Death (1990, Dwight H. Little)
The beginning of Marked for Death is nearly all right. It’s a prologue, with lead Steven Seagal–as a DEA agent–in Mexico, doing an undercover drug buy. Things go wrong. Until things go wrong, it’s not...
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