Or: “Thrill Me, Chill Me, and Show Me Jill Whitlow” It’s the 1950s. No—Wait. It’s the ’80s. Never Mind, It’s Perfect. Night of the Creeps is the kind of movie that walks into your life with a beer in one hand, a flamethrower in the other, and a half-dressed co-ed on its arm. It’s dumb … Read More “Night of the Creeps (1986): Zombies, Slugs, and a Brunette Bombshell” »
Or: “How to Weaponize a Semi-Truck and Still Bore an Audience” The Thunder That Whimpers You’d think a movie about an old Vietnam vet driving a bomb-rigged semi-truck through the desert while being chased by domestic terrorists would be fun. Hell, it sounds like a glorious slab of drive-in chaos. Guns! Explosions! Gritty one-liners! Instead, … Read More “Thunder Run (1986): Maximum Explosions, Minimum Brain Cells” »
Or: “When Two Nerds Made a Babe With a Computer and Our Teenage Brains Never Recovered” The Stuff Wet Dreams and 8-Bit Fantasies Are Made Of Let’s not pretend Weird Science is subtle. It’s not trying to be Citizen Kane. It’s not trying to teach you a life lesson about emotional growth or gender dynamics. … Read More “Weird Science (1985): Hormones, Hilarity, and a Woman Built Like a Ferrari” »
Or: “The One Where Cher Outacts Everyone, and a Teen With a Rare Condition Outshines the Whole Damn World” Not Just Another Teen Movie In a decade where teen films were mostly about losing virginity before prom (Porky’s, Revenge of the Nerds, Sixteen Candles), Mask showed up with something deeper. It didn’t need lasers, talking … Read More “Mask (1985): A Face Worth Remembering, A Story Worth Telling” »
Or: “How a Peephole, a Prank, and a Pork Joint Redefined Lowbrow Comedy” Welcome to Angel Beach High, Population: Horny Let’s get this out of the way early—Porky’s is not high art. It’s not even medium art. This is a movie where one of the main dramatic arcs involves a group of teenage boys trying … Read More “Porky’s (1981): Boners, Bullies, and the Birth of the American Raunchfest” »
Or: “How to Whack a Movie in Broad Daylight” Leave the Cannoli, Take the Shame Gotti (2018) is like being told a bedtime story by a guy who’s had ten Red Bulls, watched Goodfellas once on TNT, and thinks “RICO” is a guy he met at the deli. Directed by Kevin Connolly—yes, E from Entourage—and … Read More “Gotti (2018): The Hit That Missed” »
Or: “The Year John Travolta Declared War on Coherent Filmmaking” Welcome to Craplantis If Battlefield Earth were a sentient being, it would apologize as you walked into the theater. It wouldn’t even wait for you to sit down. It would greet you at the door with a stale cup of popcorn, whisper “I’m so sorry,” … Read More “Battlefield Earth (2000): Scientology’s Cinematic Colonoscopy” »
Or: “How I Learned to Hate Baseball, Romance, and Kevin Costner All in One Sitting” Swing and a Miss Some movies are slow burns. Others are slow bleeds. For the Love of the Game is a cinematic coma—one long, meandering sigh of a film that dribbles across the plate like a bunt with two outs … Read More “For the Love of the Game (1999): When the Pitch is Slower Than the Plot” »
Or: “How I Learned to Stop Caring and Resent a Sentient Snowman” Frostbite for the Soul There’s a special kind of cinematic despair that hits when you realize you’re watching Michael Keaton—Batman, for God’s sake—get reincarnated as a wisecracking snowman made of CGI slush and dad jokes. Welcome to Jack Frost(1998), a family film that … Read More “Jack Frost (1998): Deadbeat Dad Gets a Snow Job” »
1998’s “Holy Man” is less divine intervention, more cinematic punishment Preaching to the Conned There’s a scene in Holy Man where Eddie Murphy, dressed in flowing white, wanders barefoot into a television studio and proceeds to spout pseudo-spiritual nonsense to a crowd of mall-walking zombies. And in that moment, something clicks—not in the movie, but … Read More “Holy Man (1998): The False Prophet of Feel-Good Cinema” »
