Romancing the Stone Movie Review

The movies you loved as a kid sometimes turn out to be classics (i.e. Back to the Future and Star Wars) while others, it turns out, were really just not very good. Ah, the undiscerning view from a child’s perspective. When you’re a kid, a movie is good or not because it has excitement, adventures, romance, and comedy. For some adults I guess that never changes. Before Robert Zemeckis directed Back to the Future, he had a big commercial success in Romancing the Stone, a sort of Raiders of the Lost Ark knock-off starring Kathleen Turner as a dowdy romance novelist and Michael Douglas as a roughneck who saves her in the jungles of Colombia.

25 Years Ago This Month: June 1988

Three of the films that opened in June '88 went on to make the top 5 box office for the year.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was the big tent pole release of the month. Robert Zemeckis expertly fused live action scenes with animated characters in a way that wasn't gimicky. The story is well-crafted and provides the cartoons something to do other than be an annoying distraction.

Flight Movie Review

Most of us remember that remarkable incident of averting an air disaster when Captain “Sully” Sullenberger successfully ditched a commercial airliner in the Hudson River alongside the Manhattan skyline after losing both engines to a flock of geese on takeoff. That man, otherwise ordinary except that he was suddenly and unexpectedly elevated to hero status for saving the lives of all on board, became an overnight media sensation. The talk shows wanted him for five minutes on air. Magazines wanted to delve into his personal history to find something in his past that led to his calm during what appeared to be certain death for everyone. What if it had turned out that he was drunk or high on drugs at the time? Would that negate the good he did in saving lives? What if the hypothetical alcohol in his system actually helped him relax enough to safely land the plane on the water? How does that change our approach to him as a human being and as a pilot?

The Ten Best Films from the All-Time Top 100 Box Office

Star Wars remains in the top ten all-time box office after 33 years

The list of the top 100 box office successes is measured only in terms of pure dollars. For this reason the list is heavily slanted in favor of more recent films. This is not only because of standard economic inflation, but also because of ticket price inflation, which generally has not matched inflation of the dollar. Star Wars remained atop the list from 1977 until it was unseated by Titanic in 1998. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial was number 2 from its 1982 release until 1998. Home Alone (released at the end of 1990 and earned a significant amount of its box office in early 1991) now sits in 45th position despite having been in the top 10 for a decade or more. In less than ten years it has dropped 35 places. That's an incredibly precipitous drop when you consider the kind of staying power older films had. But with exponential growth in ticket prices we're left with a constantly shifting list of the top box office kings.

Movie Review: Peter Jackson's The Frighteners a Big Disappointment from a Big Director

*This 1996 film was released several years ago as a 4 disc DVD set in a shameless attempt to capitalize on Peter Jackson's success with The Lord of the Rings and King Kong. It is hardly deserving of a Director's Cut, Director's Commentary and the special features to fill so many bytes of digital space. If I have time this weekend, I will take a look at some of the special features and post a follow-up.

It’s a wonder that the same directing/writing husband/wife team of Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh that gave us the incredible Heavenly Creatures next foisted The Frighteners upon us. One of the earliest films to heavily employ CGI for story-telling purposes (to decent effect for 1996, I must add), it rather unfortunately has no idea what kind of movie it wants to be. What could have been a compelling psychological thriller/mystery about a man who started seeing spirits after the tragic death of his wife turns into a bit of a farce employing gimmicks, schtick, caricature and really bad jokes in a very mildly scary ghost story.

Michael J. Fox plays Frank Bannister, a kind of sham ghostbuster who utilizes the help of two ghosts (a bookish white guy with glasses and an afro-adorned, bellbottoms wearing black guy who practically speaks jive like the two black passengers in Airplane) to haunt the homes of the recently bereaved in order to prey on their vulnerability, swoop in and clear the house of poltergeists, reaping a heavy cash reward in the process.