Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 novel The Secret Garden (check price at Amazon) has been adapted before. It’s been on the big screen a number of times, on television and on the stage, including a Tony Award-winning musical. There has always been something lovely about it, but it’s sort of standoffish. In the story, the main…
In this series, I look back at some fantastic hidden gems that have been lost over the years and deserve to be rediscovered. We’ll kick things off with Night People, which opened in theaters in March of 1954. Night People If you ask a hundred different people what Gregory Peck‘s best role was, probably ninety…
With this Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull feature, we’re taking a look back at Lucasfilm’s other giant franchise and the ways it shaped the modern blockbuster. Stay tuned for all the latest Indiana Jones 5 news here. INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL The first decade of Indiana…
Sketch comedy is hard. Really, all comedy is hard, but sketch comedy is really hard – getting long in and out in a (hopefully) short period without losing any part of the build or punchline. And while there is no reason old sketch comedy writers shouldn’t also be good comedy film writers, the reality is…
Da 5 Bloods is the story of four African-American Vets who battle the forces of man and nature when they return to Vietnam seeking the remains of their fallen Squad Leader and the gold fortune he helped them hide. Recently, director Spike Lee and stars Delroy Lindo and Jonathan Majors got together for a Critics…
If you’ve been watching movies going back to the ’90s, you’re probably familiar with David Koepp’s writing from blockbusters like Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, its sequel The Lost World, the first Mission: Impossible or even the first Spider-Man movie in 2002. Every few years when he’s not one of Hollywood’s most in-demand writers, David Koepp would direct a movie or two,…
With this Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade feature, we’re taking a look back at Lucasfilm’s other giant franchise and the ways it shaped the modern blockbuster. Stay tuned for all the latest Indiana Jones 5 news here. INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE Like any series with a spectacular start, most of the analyses…
Judd Apatow has a long history of “Lovable Losers” in his work. All the way from Freaks and Geeks to The 40-Year-Old Virgin, even in films like This Is 40 and Trainwreck, Apatow tells stories about broken, juvenile characters who are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the real world. Apatow’s also been accused of glossing…
With Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, we’re taking a look back at Lucasfilm’s other giant franchise and the ways it shaped the modern blockbuster. Stay tuned for all the latest Indiana Jones 5 news here. INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM Victory, the old saying goes, has many parents, but failure is…
It’s not the end all of a new film when it sticks to a premade plot formula. There are only so many stories out there, after all (between five and seven, depending on who you listen to). Sure, when new milieus arrive, there are changes to fit the new background, but that only goes so…
The glass-is-half-empty among us has been decrying the death of cinema for many years, triggered by the increasing focus on reinventing old IP in the face of increasing apathy towards original material. The glass-is-half-full side will respond that the origination of the material matters less than what is done with it, and talented individuals have…
Starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark, we’re taking a look back at Lucasfilm’s other giant franchise and the ways it shaped the modern blockbuster. Stay tuned for all the latest Indiana Jones 5 news here. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK Make that Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, so re-christened in…
Spring, 1987. I’m a senior in high school. I’m sitting in the back seat of my friend Bill’s lime-green Chevy Nova. We’re in the parking lot of a Kroger’s, and we’re all a little drunk. Some of us more than others; we’ve been drinking beers, and right before we left the party at Heather’s house,…
Somewhere, on the side of a mountain in the Appalachians, a family is gathering for its annual celebration. Somewhere, a family is falling apart. Somewhere, the classic reactions and responses to unconscionable betrayal are turned on their heads. Somewhere, people act out their lives in a fashion both impossible to identify with and unmistakably human….
No film based on a true story is really about its subject, or at least not wholly about it. Sure, there’s a requirement to include the major moments of a life or event and keep the bones of the story in line with history. But the viewpoint of the filmmakers matters as much as the…
Miranda Bailey is a producer, director, actor, and distributor known for films like The Squid and the Whale, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Super, and Don’t Think Twice. Two years ago, she started TheCherryPicks.com. CherryPicks is a site where films are seen through the lens of women, non-binary reviewers, and writers from all around…
For a long time, complex subjects have had to be dealt with in allegory and obscurity, working around their subjects due to commercial and cultural sensitivities. There is a lot of artistic good that can come from that, requiring filmmakers to create subtle and understandable spaces for audiences to fill in rather than having everything…
There are particular buttons in a movie that, when I see them, automatically elicit an emotional response. It’s Pavlovian – if you make a movie about fathers and sons, for example, I am almost certain to react with tears. It’s just hardwired into my moviegoing DNA. Thus, Pixar Animation Studios’ Onward was almost guaranteed to make…
Horror, more than any other genre, it seems, has its hand directly on the pulse of the here and now. It has to be – our fears are changing and evolving, even while those base instincts remain the same. Our monsters may come with different, more modern costumes, but they are still monsters. The Invisible…
It’s been a long time since there’s been a film iteration of H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man with Paul Verhoeven last giving it a go 20 years ago with The Hollow Man, starring Kevin Bacon. Universal Pictures has been trying for a while to get something going for one of their Classic Movie Monsters, although…