The comedy trilogy of my childhood was Animal House, Caddyshack and Stripes. R-ratings weren’t strictly enforced, and I had seen this trilogy by the age of 13. I had to see it with Siskel and Ebert giving it good reviews. The film began as a Cheech and Chong vehicle in…
Richard Donner is one of my all-time favorite directors and completely underappreciated in the industry. I could never understand why. I used to think it was because he spent so many years directing television that the industry didn’t give him his due respect. Not a single Academy Award nomination. Not…
When a comedy has 6 sequels, each of which got progressively worse until the final in the series hardly even made it onto a theater screen, it’s hard to judge the first one fairly, especially since it never would’ve happened without the classic film “The Right Stuff”. During the filming…
In 1982, I was a big fan of movies I couldn’t possibly have seen from the 30s and 40s. We actually had a VHS VCR in the house, but the small video store near my house had very few movies from that era. But I read about them in tons…
Every once in a while, you find a film from youth that is full of great scenes with great actors who most people didn’t know at the time, but today has the makings of a classic. “Heaven Help Us” follows a group of Catholic School boys through pranks, dates and…
There’s hardly any part of “Witness” I don’t love. In fact, I wonder how a film like this even got green-lit. Much of the supporting cast and the two writers were perennial television workers, the director had never directed an American film, and films about the Amish weren’t known to…
I’ll admit it. Many of the films I enjoyed as a child were supremely influenced by a PBS show called “Sneak Previews” with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. They left the show in 1982 and went to network syndication with “At the Movies”. “Sneak Previews” continued without them and never…
I became a fan of rom-coms because of “When Harry Met Sally.” For once, the guy was a smart alec who didn’t look like a Ken doll. One of those “He could be me” situations. And Meg Ryan was everybody’s high-maintenance but sweet girl next door. In fact, I think…
I never understood why this film never really found an audience. It’s classic Stephen King directed by classic John Carpenter. I never understood why this film never really found an audience. It’s classic Stephen King directed by classic John Carpenter. King’s narrative of the teen nerd no one likes supernaturally…
This is one of those stories where a studio head says “What the heck. Let’s make a movie.” Scriptwriter Tom Holland was a successful writer and wanted to direct his next script, a horror film. Horror was in during the 80s, but vampire films were in short supply (this was…