If you are going to steal material, it doesn’t hurt to take from the very best. It also helps if the target of your appropriation is no longer with us. If you update the material enough so that it appears to be a more modern story, you have a better chance no one will notice. Unless, of course, the original is somewhat of a classic; then you simply fall back on the Hollywood tradition by using the magic password: homage. The director I refer to is Alfred Hitchcock, and the film is non other than the Jimmy Stewart classic Rear Window. Read the full story

Where do you start with a film like The Untouchables? I suppose you start at the beginning. This has to be the best script David Mamet has ever written. The highly stylized vision of 1930 Chicago utilizes as much of the myth as it does the fact. After all, we want our mobster dramas larger than life. For rights issues the film claims to be based on the 1959 Robert Stack television series; however, all of the participants admit the result is completely unique and original. Read the full story

Reservoir Dogs for the most part got it all started for Quentin Tarantino. This film came to us in 1992 on a tight budget of 1.4 Million dollars and completely changed Hollywood from there on. In many ways it was the Prequel to Pulp Fiction. Reservoir Dogs gave us a breath of fresh air from what Hollywood had been delivering at that time.

This film centers around a jewlery store robbery gone bad. The thiefs, a goup of guys all named after various colors are lying low in a local warehouse afte… Read the full story

Let’s face it, they don’t make action movies like they used to, instead now we are bombarded with special effects and explosions so I was pleased to be able to watch a movie that came from an era of superb action pictures. Starring Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia, and Ken Takakura, Black Rain seemed pretty promising going on, how does it stack up compared to the heavy hitting action movies of the late 80′s/early 90′s? Read the full story

The first time Mel Gibson and Randall Wallace got together they put out an epic film (Braveheart), which is a personal all time favorite, so my expectations were pretty high going into this film. Based upon the book We Were Soldiers Once And Young by Hal Moore and Joseph Galloway, the movie depicts the struggles of American Forces in Vietnam, both on the field and their coping families back home. Read the full story

I’m not usually the guy to go to for opinions on horror films as I almost always stay away from them (not because I don’t like being scared but rather because horror films aren’t what they use to be anymore). So what about Saw III forced me to see this one? Well I found the first two films (particularly the second) enjoyable enough with a few true quality scares. And what many saying the third is the best in the series, I figured I’d enjoy this one quite a bit. Well the end result is rather positive. Read the full story

Growing up I was a huge X-Men fan, so naturally I was excited when I heard the first X-Men movie was going to finally be released. This first movie left me impressed; good story, good acting, and then the second installment built on this and even surpassed it. Naturally after two great films, my expectations for The Last Stand were very high, so did it add up and push the level of greatness even further? Read the full story