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Field of Dreams (1989)
All his life, Ray Kinsella was searching for his dreams. Then one day, his dreams came looking for him.
Filmmaker(s): Phil Alden Robinson

Ray Kinsella is an Iowa farmer who hears a mysterious voice telling him to turn his cornfield into a baseball diamond. He does, but the voice's directions don't stop -- even after the spirits of deceased ballplayers turn up to play.

Mann’s Book Odd how you remember movies. My memory is of the sickly sweet score and Costner’s obnoxious fawning manner. All that sentimental BS about baseball that is intended to trap the casual viewer. But in re-seeing this, I remember how very clever it is. It is...


Published November 26, 2022
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My Favorite Year (1982)
The year the dreams came true.
Filmmaker(s): Richard Benjamin

Fledgling comic Benjy Stone can't believe his luck when his childhood hero, the swashbuckling matinee idol Alan Swann, gets booked to appear on the variety show he writes for. But when Swann arrives, he fails to live up to his silver screen image. Instead, he's a drunken womanizer who suffers from stage fright. Benjy is assigned to look after him before the show, and it's all he can do to keep his former idol from going completely off the rails.

Drinkin and Humpin with Many I especially appreciate films that fold reality — that somehow build parallel layers of reality and illusion. Here is the oldest formula for folding, but done better than anywhere I know. On the first layer, we have the reality of O’Toole, a once-energetic...


Published November 26, 2022
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The Incredibles (2004)
Meet the Parrs, a family of superheroes.
Filmmaker(s): Brad Bird

Bob Parr has given up his superhero days to log in time as an insurance adjuster and raise his three children with his formerly heroic wife in suburbia. But when he receives a mysterious assignment, it's time to get back into costume.

Pixar is Invincible All movies are about other movies. Most simply quote them, and most of these are bad. Some are very clever quoters, like Tarantino. But still mere quoters. A few weeks ago, I saw “Van Helsing” which impressed the daylights out of me. It...


Published November 26, 2022
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Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
There was nothing to hold onto - except each other.
Filmmaker(s): Don Siegel

A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.

Pods, Plots and Plodders Once in a while Hollywood produces a movie that decades later gets adopted by American industrialised secondary education. That’s because teachers confuse various notions of ideas and think that movies are a great teaching tool. So to teach the evils of...


Published November 26, 2022
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Cube Zero (2004)
Every nightmare has a beginning.
Filmmaker(s): Ernie Barbarash

A young programmer whose job is to watch over the reality-warping Cube defies orders to rescue an innocent mother trapped in one of its rooms.

Watchers I was one of the enthusiasts of the original. It seemed a clever solution to one of filmdoms most persistent challenges: how to stage drama. Noir is our most basic cinematic model. The core of noir is a universe where capricious fate toys with human destiny...


Published November 26, 2022
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Be Cool (2005)
Everyone is looking for the next big hit.
Filmmaker(s): F. Gary Gray

Disenchanted with the movie industry, Chili Palmer tries the music industry, meeting and romancing a widow of a music executive along the way.

Acting Cool We are born into the doom of being actors. If we are lucky we discover who we are but until then we go through a process of acting a role. Some movies play with this idea, and “Get Shorty” was one of the most...


Published November 26, 2022
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The Auteur Theory (1999)
Sex. Lies. Filmmaking.
Filmmaker(s): Evan Oppenheimer

At an absurdly self-indulgent student film festival, the directors of the (mostly terrible) short films start getting killed off one by one and a budding British documentary filmmaker decides to investigate.

Murderous I am deep into a study for a book on folding in film. "Folding" is a general term for various types of self reference, awareness, self-creation and reflection. The very idea behind my study is that this is a very useful thing to understand and...


Published November 26, 2022
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Auto Focus (2002)
A day without sex is a day wasted.
Filmmaker(s): Paul Schrader

A successful TV star during the 1960s, former "Hogan's Heroes" actor Bob Crane projects a wholesome family-man image, but this front masks his persona as a sex addict who records and photographs his many encounters with women, often with the help of his seedy friend, John Henry Carpenter. This biographical drama reveals how Crane's double life takes its toll on him and his family, and ultimately contributes to his death.

Soldiering, Winking, Filming Paul Schrader simultaneously fascinates and repels me. That’s because he has such intelligent ideas for films, and then makes then in such a pedestrian fashion the inspiration is all but trod away. And his ideas are so very clever in addition to being intelligently...


Published November 26, 2022
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Murder She Said (1961)
See the strange case of the strangler-killer on the night express!
Filmmaker(s): George Pollock

Miss Marple believes she's seen a murder in a passing-by train, yet when the police find no evidence she decides to investigate it on her own.

Tumbling Down My history of introspection in film starts with clever mystery writers. Then when talkies fell on us there was a huge experimental breeding ground for techniques that worked. By the 40s that chapter was all over and noir was incubated. Agatha Christie played a central...


Published November 26, 2022
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Thirteen at Dinner (1985)
Filmmaker(s): Lou Antonio

Actress Jane Wilkinson wants a divorce, but her husband, Lord Edgware, refuses. She convinces Hercule Poirot to use his famed tact and logic to make her case. Lord Edgware turns up murdered, a well-placed knife wound at the base of his neck. It will take the precise Poirot to sort out the lies from the alibis - and find the criminal before another victim dies.

Suchet Sachet Suffers A new batch of old TeeVee Christie adaptations have become available on DVD. I’ve been marching through them valiantly, looking for anything of value. Here it is. This one is good. The story on which it is based is one of Christie’s more interesting...


Published November 26, 2022
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