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Black Magic (1944)
Chan stalks a fiendish murderer!
Filmmaker(s): Phil Rosen

Chinese detective Charlie Chan solves a murder linked to the occult. This movie had an alternative title: Meeting at Midnight.

Spooked original intent of the Chan series, I suppose, was to introduce the “oriental” mind to the mystery genre. As with the equally strange notion of Belgian logic with Poirot, we would be charmed by novel synaptic paths. By the time of this film, indeed...


Published January 17, 2024
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Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)
Fast food. High times.
Filmmaker(s): Danny Leiner

Nerdy accountant Harold and his irrepressible friend, Kumar, get stoned watching television and find themselves utterly bewitched by a commercial for White Castle. Convinced there must be one nearby, the two set out on a late-night odyssey that takes them deep into New Jersey. Somehow, the boys manage to run afoul of rednecks, cops and even a car-stealing Neil Patrick Harris before getting anywhere near their beloved sliders.

Fast Times at Ellis Island a genre takes hold it “comes alive” and does what it needs to do to adapt and selfishly survive. It happens in horror, especially in zombie and vampire films. And it is happening in the high school film. High school movies...


Published January 18, 2024
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Harriet the Spy (1996)
On your case!
Filmmaker(s): Bronwen Hughes

When the secret notebook of a young girl who fancies herself a spy is found by her friends, her speculations make her very unpopular! Can she win her friends back?

Is About Itself little film has been roundly criticised for being disjointed and amateurish. Well, it is disjointed: part of it is surreal allegory, part realistic morality play. Part of it moves with a natural rhythm while other parts seem to have been transplanted from...


Published January 19, 2024
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The Judy Garland Show (1963-1964)

The Judy Garland Show is an American musical variety television series that aired on CBS on Sunday nights during the 1963-1964 television season. Despite a sometimes stormy relationship with Judy Garland, CBS had found success with several television specials featuring the star. Garland, who for years had been reluctant to commit to a weekly series, saw the show as her best chance to pull herself out of severe financial difficulties. Production difficulties beset the series almost from the beginning. The series had three different producers in the course of its 26 episodes and went through a number of other key personnel changes. With the change in producers also came changes to the show's format, which started as comedy/variety but switched to an almost purely concert format. While Garland herself was popular with critics, the initial variety format and her co-star, Jerry Van Dyke, were not. The show competed with Bonanza, then the fourth most popular program on television, and consistently performed poorly in the ratings. Although fans rallied in an attempt to save the show, CBS cancelled it after a single season. TV Guide included the series in their 2013 list of 60 shows that were "Cancelled Too Soon".

Bet Your Life skill and training are one thing, Encountering someone with these qualities who is willing to commit everything in a performance is yet another thing. Judy had a TeeVee variety show like dozens of others but she was totally unlike any of them....


Published January 19, 2024
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Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
They can't keep their hands off each others assets.
Filmmaker(s): Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

A revenge-seeking gold digger marries a womanizing Beverly Hills lawyer with the intention of making a killing in the divorce.

Acting Out Trains celebrate the Coens. I like how they try to surround the craft by doing projects of different kinds. It seems only Woody and these brothers like to walk on the edge of the universe to see how big it is. So even...


Published January 19, 2024
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JCVD (2008)
The Biggest Fight of His Life!
Filmmaker(s): Mabrouk El Mechri

Between his tax problems and his legal battle with his wife for the custody of his daughter, these are hard times for the action movie star who finds that even Steven Seagal has pinched a role from him! This fictionalized version of Jean-Claude Van Damme returns to the country of his birth to seek the peace and tranquility he can no longer enjoy in the United States, but inadvertently gets involved in a bank robbery with hostages.

Hostages Divided friends recommended this because of the enfolded reality and story. Jean Claude, an actor in the film, plays himself as an actor between films who gets entangled in a “Dog Day Afternoon” movie-like robbery. If there was charm in this construction, it would have...


Published January 19, 2024
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The In-Laws (2003)
He's not losing his daughter. He's gaining a madman.
Filmmaker(s): Andrew Fleming

Right before his daughter's wedding, a mild-mannered foot doctor discovers that his new in-laws are international smugglers.

Hidden Agent Brooks breaks my heart. Every time I encounter him I see near greatness. All he has to do is decide. But there must be some price he is unwilling to pay, because every outing (acting, directing, writing) there is a palpable holding back, an...


Published January 20, 2024
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Gummo (1997)
Prepare to visit a town you'd never want to call home.
Filmmaker(s): Harmony Korine

Solomon and Tummler are two teenagers killing time in Xenia, Ohio, a small town that has never recovered from the tornado that ravaged the community in the 1970s.

She's Been Dead a Long Time with the Movie Camera' meets ‘La Notte' meets ‘Harvey' through ‘Donnie Darko' -- and is as effective as any of them. And as tuned to video as other masters are to film. I was really impressed, and that's saying...


Published January 23, 2024
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The Big Feast (1973)
An experience that hammers your sensibilities.
Filmmaker(s): Marco Ferreri

Four friends gather at a villa with the intention of eating themselves to death.

Sit, Eat is a sort of adventure in shocking an audience. It failed with me because I’ve been exposed to so many more incisive things. But I like the way it is put together. It is a sort of “Love’s Labors Lost” meets “8 1/2 Women.”...


Published January 30, 2024
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Intacto (2001)
Some are born with luck. Others gamble for it.

An enigmatic tale of four people whose lives are intertwined by destiny are subject to the laws of fate. They discover that luck is something they cannot afford to be without as they gamble with the highest stakes possible in a deadly game from which only one of them will emerge intact.

Shoot the Picture are a few good filmmakers alive now, ones I credit. Mostly they are distributed in accidental pools of the industry, a couple in Hong Kong, a master in Amsterdam, a few passing through Hollywood it seems. Singles here and there. But there...


Published January 30, 2024
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