Films That Matter
Pit Stop
After Roger Corman’s major success with House of Usher (1960), he promptly turned to adapting another Edgar Allan Poe story to start a franchise of sorts, with The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) being an even bigger win... with it making over two million dollars on a modest budget of only three hundred thousand. Getting Vincent Price (House of Wax; Laura) back after House of Usher’s critical and commercial winnings, this time he plays Nicholas Medina, a tortured soul living in a tomb of a castle with his servants after his gorgeous wife Elizabeth (Barbara Steele – Black Sunday; The Horrible Dr. Hichcock) has seemingly died of a massive heart attack brought on by fright. Feeling as if he is truly cursed, he resides in the same place that his sadistic Spanish Inquisition father once tortured his victims, where his mother and uncle died, and now where his wife has met her untimely end. It has become so bad that even Nicholas’ sister Catherine (Luana Anders) has returned home to try and ease his sorrows.
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The Professional Delivers
Léon: The ProfessionalJune 17, 2013The 1980's and 1990's were two superb decades for amazing action films that contained easy on the eyes stunts, clever storylines, touches of comedy and great villains. Movies like the Die Hard trilogy, Lethal Weapon 1-4 , Mission Impossible, and James Bond entries like License to Kill and Goldeneye entertained in all of these categories. One of the best action movies to come out of the 90's though, is known as Léon or The Professional.
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It’s the End of the World as We Know It
Children of MenMay 30, 2013One of my favourite film styles is the post apocalyptic genre. Depending on the time of production, these movies depict the fears of the day. For instance, in 1973 Soylent Green was made, which highlighted the possibility of overpopulation, lack of employment and most importantly, food shortages; (look for a review of this film at a later date). Quite differently, in the 2006 motion picture Children of Men, we see quite the opposite – a world that is dying as humans are no longer able to procreate.
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Ebert Didn’t Pan This Labyrinth
Pan's LabyrinthApril 23, 2013Roger Ebert’s top film of 2006 was the Spanish motion picture Pan’s Labyrinth, which he considered to be one of the greatest fantasy movies of all-time. A fairy tale meant for adults, the storyline follows a young girl, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), as she moves to a secluded old mill with her mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) and new stepfather, Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez).
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Man, I Feel Like A Woman
Some Like It HotMarch 18, 2013No, I will not be talking about country music or Shania Twain, but this line aptly describes what either of the two main characters could have said during the 1959 classic comedy Some Like It Hot.