“Revenge is a meal best served cold.” Denzel Washington’s Creasy states at one point during Man on Fire. This is a common saying repeated in many revenge thriller films. What Man on Fire has to add to the genre isn’t particularly new; the narrative beats we’ve all seen before; it’s …

Return of the Jedi is the third installment in the original Star Wars trilogy and the sixth episode in the greater Skywalker saga. Building on the success of  A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi delivers a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, tying up loose …

Sometimes a film is exactly what you think it’s about. As far as I can tell, there is no deeper meaning to Jalmari Helander’s Sisu. The Finnish film is based on some historical fact, but there’s no doubt of its intention to provide a lean 90 minutes of extraordinarily gory …

Finally, 2023 has produced its first genuinely noteworthy film released in a sizable amount of theaters. Ari Aster’s third feature Beau Is Afraid, has no shot at commercial glory this weekend. It’s not made for mass consumption, and it’ll likely baffle many people, and that’s ok. I’m not sure if …

I am admittedly not the target audience for Mafia Mamma. This is a chick flick (nothing wrong with that) mob comedy about empowerment. The best aspect of Catherine Hardwicke’s film is that it’s about a flawed woman who has some shit happen to her, and we can somewhat identify with …

What a spectacular missed opportunity Chris McKay’s Renfield is. The screenplay by Ryan Ridley, based on a story from The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman (that’s a big name to have attached to this project), is hampered by focusing on characters not named Dracula and Renfield. Despite some cleverness in …

Bertrand Tavernier’s In The Electric Mist takes a well-worn formula (small-town Southern cop story) and adds some added weight and levity. Think of it as a John Grisham movie without lawyers and with a pulse. The film is based on the novel In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead by …

Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye immediately establishes the mood and tone of the picture perfectly. It’s a classic Altman sequence that refuses to rush things as we enter this world of updated Raymond Chandler for the 1970s. Elliott Gould’s Philip Marlowe is awoken by his cat at 3 in the …

Kurt Wimmer’s Equilibrium is a curious case. It explores themes of individuality, free will, and the power of human emotion. It’s a bit of a jumbled mess and sloppy at times, but some good action scenes and a few thought-provoking ideas are also interspersed. Roger Ebert wrote, “Equilibrium would be …

Introducing, Another Look:  Instead of doing another Unsung Cinema, I’ve launched another series of articles tentatively titled Another Look. These are for films I watch that doesn’t fit the Unsung Cinema category, especially a movie like Sexy Beast. Sure, you could argue that it is unsung, and in some ways, …