American Assassin Everyone wants to have a movie franchise these days. From Bourne to Bond to all points in between, a franchise is something that keeps the crowds coming in and the money flowing into the pockets of its producers. Since most franchises are dependent upon the strength of its lead character, one must choose […]
American Beauty Much like Easy Rider signaled the true end to the tumultuous decade that was the 1960s, this 1999 Instant Classic can be hailed as the film that brought an end to the descent into potted plant conformity that was the 1990s, where the American people embraced a smooth-talking huckster named Bill Clinton as […]
American Gangster: Unrated Director’s Cut In bringing to the screen the story of Frank Lucas (whose real-life exploits obviously inspired many fictional crime movies over the years), the 1970s drug kingpin of New York who made hundreds of millions selling heroin imported straight from southeast Asia (in the midst of Vietnam), director Ridley Scott puts […]
American Gothic The so called “backwoods horror movie’ (as forever embodied by the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its various sequels and spinoffs) has been a staple of the genre for decades with numerous attempts to replicate the formula in several other films over the years, mostly without success and also without anything resembling good […]
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 […]