Something must have been in the water in 1960. All around the world, filmmakers, either at the beginning, middle, or the end of their careers, swung for the fences. In Japan, Akira Kurosawa spun Shakespeare’s Hamlet into a corporate thriller with … Continue reading PEEPING TOM
I guess you could say the low point arrived on March 27, 2022, with the broadcast of the 94th Academy Awards. No, the “slap heard ’round the world” wasn’t it—though that cast a pall over the proceedings, didn’t it?—but the … Continue reading Cinema 101
Hollywood loves a remake. Sometimes it’s a successful foreign film recast with English-speaking celebrities. Sometimes it’s a decent story that just didn’t work the first time around. Most of the time, it’s a hollow-minded cash-grab by a studio rejiggering its … Continue reading WEST SIDE STORY
The shadow of Alfred Hitchcock looms large in cinema. So much so that it’s hard to divorce his stylistic innovations from movies that may or may not have been influenced by him. Take Blow the Man Down, a recent release currently … Continue reading Two for the Master
Michael J. Cinema 