Though it’s managed to achieve cult status nearly thirty years after its theatrical release, Brian De Palma’s Scarface was attacked by most critics. Made for an estimated $25 million, box office response was rather tepid, only grossing nearly $66 million….
Despite his successes, director Brian De Palma has rarely been a critical favorite. In his early years of his career, he was accused of ripping off Alfred Hitchcock and being very misogynistic. Today, many feel his films aren’t nearly as…
“I chose not to choose life. I chose to choose something else,” says the film’s narrator and main character, a twenty-something Edinburgh man named Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor), near the beginning of Trainspotting. From the start, it’s clear that this…
Straw Dogs, one of Sam Peckinpah’s best films, was released in 1971 as American soldiers were fighting in Vietnam and citizens at home were protesting United States involvement in the conflict. Shocking at the time because of its explicit gore,…
As Blu-ray becomes an increasingly popular format, the major studios have really begun to see that the true classics of cinema make their way to high-def. I for one couldn’t be happier. One of Paramount’s latest classics to make a…
A temporary solution while Andy Whitfield, the actor playing Spartacus, underwent cancer treatment, Starz’s Spartacus: Gods of the Arena is a prequel to the events that precipitated the gory season one finale of Spartacus: Blood and Sand. As a result,…
Dead at 29 from tuberculosis French filmmaker Jean Vigo left behind just one feature length film and three shorts. Despite his meager output, Vigo was a major influence on the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s….
Produced by Tony and Ridley Scott and narrated by Sam Rockwell for the History Channel, Gettysburg examines the events that took place in the small Pennsylvania town of the same name during the first three days of July in 1863….
Full of haunting, imagery, Orpheus is surrealist filmmaker’s Jean Cocteau’s bold attempt to merge film and poetry. Bored by his life of fame and notoriety as a leading Left Bank poet, Orphée (Jean Marais) is ready for new experiences. At…
Financed by Paramount Pictures and then nearly shelved when executives saw its bold ending involving machine guns, If…. brought controversy and criticism to director Lindsay Anderson (This Sporting Life) and made an instant star of pouty young Malcolm McDowell, who…