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<i>The Revenant</i> Is The Manliest (And Bear-iest) Movie Ever Made
You have two very specific questions about The Revenant, and we’ll get to those, promise. But first, let us discuss the scene where Leonardo DiCaprio, playing a über-badass 19th-century American outdoorsman, flees a party of bloodthirsty Native Americans, rides his horse off a cliff, lands in a gian...
Spoiler-Free Lines From <i>Star Wars: The Force Awakens</i>, Ranked
13. “We’ve got company.” ...
A Completely Dumb And Unnecessary Argument About Sex Scenes
Batman v Superman is coming out soon, and the man in charge of this fiasco was also the architect of arguably the worst sex scene in movie history. But what makes a sex scene terrible, apart from the tragic decision to include a Leonard Cohen song? And can a sex scene ever REALLY be bad so long as i...
The First Three <i>Rocky</i> Movies Were Nothing But White Wish Fulfillment
This piece originally appeared in the August, 1982 issue of Film Comment. It is reprinted here with permission. ...
<i>Red Cliff </i>Is The Crazed War Epic John Woo Was Reborn To Make
It’s probably fair to say that John Woo went limping back to Hong Kong. In the ’80s and early ’90s, Woo changed the Hong Kong film industry by making some of the best action movies of all time: Hard Boiled, The Killer, A Better Tomorrow, Bullet in the Head. He then spent a decade in Hollywood, where...
The<i> Rocky </i>Movies, Ranked
Sylvester Stallone’s recent sit-down with Robert Rodriguez for The Director’s Chair made a pretty compelling case that the Rocky movies ought to be taken seriously as Sly’s greatest artistic achievement. Sure, most of them are exactly the same movie. (Rocky has to fight somebody no one thinks he ca...
The Grisly, Goofy <i>Starship Troopers </i>Played Dumb To Make Hollywood Look Even Dumber
The moment when you discover what Starship Troopers is really about is one of the great eureka moments in the life of any young movie dork. I’ve got vivid memories of staggering out of a suburban multiplex in 1997 and sputtering, “What the fuck was that?” To my teenage self, it was basically Saved b...
<i>Skin Trade </i>Lets<i> </i>Dolph Lundgren Cook, And For A Dumb Action Flick, That's Enough
Dolph Lundgren has had a couple of cups of coffee with the American pop-cultural psyche: haughtily sneering over Apollo Creed’s death in Rocky IV, wearing a necklace of severed ears in Universal Soldier, that sort of thing. But he never crossed over to the upper tier of action stars, and it’s hard t...
Cristiano Ronaldo's Movie Premiere Was Perfectly Sad
Early on in his review of the new movie/vanity project documenting a year in the life of Cristiano Ronaldo, Daniel Taylor noted “it is difficult not to come away with the feeling that Ronaldo must shout his own name during sex.”...
<i>Infernal Affairs </i>Can't Escape <i>The Departed</i>'s Shadow, But Watch It Anyway
Hong Kong action-movie directors have picked up a lot from Martin Scorsese. Think of John Woo in particular: the brotherly criminal-underworld bonding in A Better Tomorrow, the gliding camera moves of The Killer, that endless and amazing tracking shot in Hard Boiled. When you consider that Woo basic...
<i>The Final Girls </i>Is The Nadir Of Meta-Horror, Which Is The Nadir Of Real Horror
If you’re a horror fan, you’ve noticed that every few months, there’s a new entry in the genre that’s explicitly marketed to non-fans, with blogs and critics hyping “your new favorite horror film” and granting best-since-whatever status to a certain kind of movie. Think titles like Tucker & Dale vs....
<i>The Peanuts Movie </i>Is Faithful To Charles Schulz's Creation, But Still Gets It Wrong
Back in 1997, when L.A. Weekly critic Manohla Dargis gave a negative review to The Lost World, the hotly-anticipated sequel to Jurassic Park, she noted that not liking the movie was the equivalent of announcing that Christmas had been canceled to its fans. In kind, giving a thumbs-down to The Peanut...
I Watched B-Movie TV For 24 Hours Straight And Didn't Survive
There comes a point in any 24-hour movie marathon when you’re bleary-eyed, you reek of jet-black coffee and unnatural foodstuffs, and you’re dreaming of nothing more than a hot shower and the soft embrace of a down comforter. You’re thinking to yourself, “Why the hell did I do this?” And you have no...
<i>The Wild Bunch </i>Is Still Nasty, Unrelenting, And Pretty Goddamn Great
Imagine being alive in 1969 and going to see The Wild Bunch when it was new. It was released in an era when American movies were changing, and when audiences were getting more and more used to seeing gruesome violence onscreen, like in Bonnie & Clyde. Granted, it was still a time when movies would t...
Movies Should Come Out Sooner
If you’ve been on the internet this week, you’ve probably seen some fresh headlines about the new Suicide Squad movie. That’s because Empire magazine has an exclusive spread of photos in its latest issue, and that means it’s time for everyone to get hyped about Harley Quinn’s eye makeup and whatnot....
The Political Satire <i>Our Brand Is Crisis </i>Isn't Nearly As Sharp As It Pretends To Be
Our Brand Is Crisis means to cast a harsh light on presidential campaigns, but it mostly just panders. The new film from director David Gordon Green (who’s done everything from George Washington to Pineapple Express) spends way too much time congratulating you for agreeing with its cynical perspecti...
<i>No Tears For The Dead </i>Mixes Badass Fights With Heavy Consequences
In the opening scene of the 2014 South Korean thriller No Tears for the Dead, we see a dark, brooding figure, tattoos peaking out of the sleeves of his suit, folding together an origami crane in a nightclub. After spending a few seconds charming a little girl a few tables over, he gets the text he’s...
Here's Your Ridiculously Early 2016 Oscar Preview
The next Academy Awards will be hosted by Chris Rock and will be held on February 28, 2016. That is 130 days from now. By then, the Iowa caucus, and the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, will be over. The Super Bowl will be a fading memory. Selection Sunday will be two weeks away. It is a ...
What If The New <i>Star Wars </i>Sucks, Too?
Last night, the third trailer for the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiered on YouTube and ESPN. Did you shit your dick? I definitely shat my dick. I think the dick-shittingest moment, for me, was when the new Darth Vader guy was doing the Force to the other guy’s brain, but the low-altitu...
<i>The Avenging Eagle </i>Is A Great Shaw Brothers Flick For Kung Fu Novices And Experts Alike
Sometime in the last month or two, a whole pile of Shaw Brothers kung fu movies suddenly appeared on Netflix. The Shaw Brothers studio started making movies in Hong Kong in the ’20s, but it’s most famous for the incredibly huge catalog it cranked out during the ’70s and early ’80s. At its peak, the ...