100 Film Favorites – #84: Holes (Andrew Davis, 2003) There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. The great majority of you are roughly my age, so chances are good you’ve encountered Holes in some capacity. The novel was on pretty much every 4th-6th grade “recommended reading” list growing up. The book’s ubiquity and critical…
100 Film Favorites – #85: Darkman (Sam Raimi, 1990) Sometimes Liam Neeson just has to break some fingers. Darkman stars Neeson as Dr. Peyton Westlake, a scientist working on designing synthetic skin for burn victims. When (surprise) corrupt 80s land developers want to hide evidence of their corruption uncovered by Westlake’s lawyer girlfriend, they hire…
100 Film Favorites – #86: The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw (Mordicai Gerstein and Al Kouzel, 1980) Today, we’ve moved from Halloween to Thanksgiving. The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw is probably the best Thanksgiving special out there…not that it really has all that much competition. Typically, a franchise has to grow fairly old and ubiquitous before…
100 Film Favorites – #87: The Halloween Tree (Mario Piluso, 1993) We’ve come to the first made-for-TV film on this list. It won’t be the last. If you don’t think TV-movies are kosher for consideration on a “favorite films” list, you’ve been warned. The Halloween Tree is an animated adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s 1972 novel…
100 Film Favorites – #88: *batteries not included (Matthew Robbins, 1987) This may well be the best movie ever made to have a title beginning with a punctuation mark. Or at least, the best such film to make this Countdown.
100 Film Favorites – #89: Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (Peter Hewitt, 1991) “You might be a king, or a little street-sweeper, But sooner or later you dance with the reaper.”
100 Film Favorites – #90: The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan, 1999) 10 posts down. 90 to go! In the words of the Ice King, primary antagonist of Adventure Time, “When you have stanky old wizard eyes, sometimes you see things that are real, and other times, it’s like crazy crazy crazy in-your-face all the…
100 Film Favorites – #91: Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012) This is probably going to be a short entry. Then again, I’ve thought that several times before, and yet all the posts thus far have turned out pretty long.
The next time somebody complains that a supposedly ‘real’ movie takes liberties with the truth (like, say, The Social Network), I want to show them The Bling Ring. This is what happens when you don’t dramatize your movie. For all I know, the events portrayed here may well be accurate representations of the actions of…
100 Film Favorites – #92: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Gore Verbinski, 2006) Captain Jack. Johnny Depp. Davy Jones. Giant Squid.