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” »
“Buckle Up, It’s a Midlife Crisis” If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to watch Tim Robbins try to out-funny Martin Lawrence while both wrestle through a script that feels like it was pulled from the trunk of a car at 3 a.m., Nothing to Lose is for you. For the rest of us, it’s … Read More “Nothing to Lose (1997) Review: Two Men, One Car, Zero Chemistry” »
Introduction: Love Is a Battlefield—With Binoculars There’s romantic comedy, and then there’s Addicted to Love, a film that dares to ask, “What if two incredibly unlikable people committed felonies together and called it foreplay?” Directed by Griffin Dunne and starring Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick, this 1997 stalker-screwball mess tries to pass off voyeurism and … Read More “Addicted to Love (1997) Review: Two Creeps and a Telescope” »
Introduction: You Had Me at “Ugh” There are movies that define a generation—and then there’s Jerry Maguire, a cinematic cheese wheel rolled straight through a Hallmark store and into the sports agent industry. Directed by Cameron Crowe and starring Tom Cruise at his toothiest, this 1996 rom-dram-com hybrid wants to inspire you, move you, and … Read More “Jerry Maguire (1996) Review: Show Me the Door” »
