American Graffiti Back when wunderkind George Lucas was trying to get Star Wars made, it was suggested to him to try to make something more “normal”, and with Francis Coppola’s help, he came up with this, a smash hit that made $115 million and earned Oscar noms for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and […]
American History X Race relations movies can be tricky sells, as more than likely they are made with a stoic, obvious political message, or worse, you have someone like Spike Lee who carries such a wrongheaded ideology with him that it winds up being racist itself as he glorifies and romanticizes painfully offensive acts of […]
American Psycho Both a scathing satire of the decade of the 1980s and an intense horror movie with a powerhouse perfomance from Christian Bale, this is one of the craziest things you will ever see. Patrick Bateman will stand alone as the ultimate example of the soullessness and narcissism of that decade, and it’s as […]
An American Werewolf In London There were few directors in the late 70s to early 80s with the audacity and creative genius of John Landis, and his string of box office hits during the period showcased his original style in a way that combined elements of mass appeal and legitimately artistic vision, all before his […]
Analyze That This 2002 sequel to the bland Analyze This actually manages to expand upon the one joke premise of the original, at times going all over the map to try to make something work, and actually squeezing some mild chuckles here and there. These ideas include DeNiro’s Paul Vitti at the beginning playing crazy […]
Analyze This An idea that has now been seemingly run into the ground in popular culture is that of the big fearsome mob moss being so insecure that he feels that he has to run out to see a psychiatrist. Certainly The Sopranos mined that territory for years, but another famous example is this 1999 […]
Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy Will Ferrell’s fame in comedy can seem rather inexplicable to the typical layman type who prefers their humor to be cool, sophisticated, and funny. Back from his early SNL days when he seemed almost determined to emulate his performing style based on various legendary alumni from the show’s past […]
Angel Heart It’s pretty difficult to come up with a list of the greatest horror movies of all time and NOT think of one that didn’t spawn several sequels of varying quality, but when one thinks of the best and scariest stand-alone horror flicks this 1987 film from Alan Parker invariably tops the list, a […]
Anguish What starts out as a typical 80s slasher turns into something with a quite brilliant and effective gimmick. The plot follows an orderly in an eye clinic played by Michael Lerner who after being hypnotized by his bizarre mother, goes on a murder rampage during which time he removes the eyeballs of his victims. […]
Animal Crackers With The Marx Brothers now firmly entrenched in Hollywood filmmaking (although their films were being shot on soundstages in New York) after the success of their debut feature (The Cocoanuts), in 1930 they came along with their second film, one which was also based on a stage play which they had starred in […]