Sort by
Listing Movies
Display Movies
Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Not all angels are innocent.
Filmmaker(s): Peter Jackson

Wealthy and precocious teenager Juliet transfers from England to New Zealand with her family, and soon befriends the quiet, brooding Pauline through their shared love of fantasy and literature. When their parents begin to suspect that their increasingly intense and obsessive bond is becoming unhealthy, the girls hatch a dark plan for those who threaten to keep them apart.

The Fourth World of the Third Man Perhaps the premier concern of modern filmmakers is locating somewhere in the film exactly where the filmmaking process is. This is often incorrectly called irony, self-reference or the odd construction of reflexivity. I call it “folding” and it seems...


Published November 28, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Threes |
Tagged: , ,
Freaky Friday (2003)
Mondays are manic. Wednesdays are wild. And Fridays are about to get a little freaky.
Filmmaker(s): Mark Waters

Mother and daughter bicker over everything -- what Anna wears, whom she likes and what she wants to do when she's older. In turn, Anna detests Tess's fiancé. When a magical fortune cookie switches their personalities, they each get a peek at how the other person feels, thinks and lives.

Borrowed Eyes I am convinced that many movies are about movies as a matter of demand. When we enter that darkened room, we often expect not be taken to another real reality, but to a movie reality that has some degree of self-awareness. A great many of...


Published November 28, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
How to Make a Monster (2001)
What started out as a simple game... became a virtual nightmare.
Filmmaker(s): George Huang

Video game developer Clayton Software enlists the talents of a misfit group of programmers to develop the scariest computer combat game: EVILUTION. With four weeks to bring the game to market and a million-dollar bonus on the line, they utilize a telemetry suit to render a 3-D version of the onscreen player. But when a power surge gives the hard drive a mind of its own, the suit comes to life to play the game for real and the programming team find themselves in the middle of a chilling virtual nightmare beyond their wildest imagination.

Makes Itself I have several movieland people I follow because what they do is pretty interesting. I have a (much larger) list of people that I follow casually because they show promise, or have done something interesting in the past. This little TeeVee movie popped up because...


Published November 26, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
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
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Threes |
Tagged: , ,
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
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Ones |
Tagged: , ,
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
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
Poirot: Death in the Clouds (1988)

Intersecting Planes Agatha Christie was probably our most careful student of the genre. She was all over the map, so to speak, trying all sorts of variations. Her twists on the genre were intended to complement the twists within the story. The most interesting and adventuresome were...


Published November 25, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: , ,
It (1927)
A salesgirl with plenty of 'it' pursues a handsome playboy.

A flapper shopgirl woos her rich boss with animal magnetism, otherwise known as "it."

Invention I have put this film on my list of required viewing for cineliteracy. The reason is obvious: here we have the creation of a persona that changed the world of film and indeed the world. I believe that the relationship between film reflecting society and inventing it...


Published November 25, 2022
| Categorised as Fours, IMDB Comments |
Tagged: , ,
The Business of Strangers (2001)
Filmmaker(s): Patrick Stettner

A dark thriller about a successful businesswoman and her young assistant who toy with a slow-witted businessman while stuck at an airport hotel.

The Disconnected. So much of life consists of invisible missed opportunities. Usually, they are invisible because what we see appears so competent that it seems only natural that it be as it is. This is such an opportunity. Our two characters here are presented competently. Everything else...


Published November 24, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Ones |
Tagged: , ,
Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996)
Filmmaker(s): Mira Nair

Tara and Maya are two inseparable friends in India. Their tastes, habits, and hobbies are the same. Years later, the two have matured, but have maintained their friendship. Tara gets married to the local prince, Raj Singh, who soon succeeds the throne as the sole heir. After the marriage, Raj gets bored of Tara and starts seeking another female to satisfy his sexual needs. He notices Maya and is instantly attracted to her. He has her included as one of his courtesans, and is intimate with her. Watch what happens when Tara finds out and the extent she will go to keep her marriage intact.

Club Exotica One of the several foibles of the United States is that we have no indigenous sexual exotica. All sexual archetypes are inherited from predecessor cultures (excepting the competing African-American cultures), which is one reason -- I believe -- that US popular culture is so...


Published November 24, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Ones |
Tagged: , ,
preloader image