Ghostbusters shouldn’t have worked. To be sure, it’s become a beloved film, but it’s a beloved film almost in spite of itself. Dan Aykroyd’s original script was reportedly several hundred pages, involving pandimensional travel and bonkers science fiction concepts. Had it been shot, it would have cost over $200 million — in 1980s money. Ivan […]

According to the official count by Marvel Studios and Disney, there are more than eight thousand characters in the Marvel Universe. This number doesn’t necessarily count supporting characters and one-offs. If it did, we’d be somewhere in the neighborhood of over seventy-two thousand. With numbers like that, it only makes sense that most characters will […]

Do you know how much a billion dollars is? I mean, it’s a staggeringly large number, so much so that even when the term is tossed around willy-nilly, most of us don’t understand the enormity of it. Seconds of research taught me that a billion is a thousand million. To think of it in physical […]

Watch movies long enough, and you’ll start to learn the individual traits that directors have. I think it would be physically impossible for Quentin Tarantino to make a movie with no dialogue.* If J.J. Abrams made a movie set in a lightless cave, he’d figure out a way to sneak a lens flare in somewhere. […]

There have been eleven movies made with the title Vengeance is Mine. The first of those films was made way back in 1912, proving that even in those sepia-hued days of the Titanic, massive dinner parties, and the birth of the Oreo, people also wanted to see movies where somebody who’s gotten screwed over achieves […]

He was close. He thought he was ready, but at the last moment, he stepped away. Wait — let me back up and I’ll explain. To set the stage, last weekend I knew my upcoming review would be Halloween Kills, the latest entry in the extremely venerable franchise. The film picks up moments after the […]

Movie stars are good. Serious Actors are better. Best of all are That Guys.* Even if you’re a casual film viewer, you likely have a favorite That Guy. In blockbusters, they’ll show up in supporting roles, often playing the same 2-3 kinds of roles. Michael Biehn, for example, is an excellent That Guy, and he […]

I once read that a person’s preferred 007 can be determined by when their father showed them their first Bond movie. This is not a concept that’s supported by any kind of rigorous scientific method, and I know that because of my own experiences. My father was a product of World War II and the […]

We say that all lives have value. Do they? If so, what exactly is that value? To ponder a question like that is, at best, distasteful. At worst, it’s a monstrous concept that’s so big, it almost can’t be grappled with. But someone has to. Someone has to take the decisions and idiosyncrasies that live […]

At the end of the day, all movies are the same, a collection of images and sounds edited together to elicit an emotional response. But there’s a world’s worth of difference between Top Gun and The Elephant Man, between Predator and Salaam Bombay, between Thor and Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. There’s cinema, […]