Tag: thriller
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Dad-Dominant Review Batch (Part 3): Affliction, Blood Father, Brad’s Status, Broken Lance, Ezra, Fatherhood, Great American Pastime, Infinitely Polar Bear, Old Dads, Tarzan Finds a Son, We Bought a Zoo, When Did You Last See Your Father, World’s Greatest Dad
Happy Father’s Day! Like last year (and 2020, for that matter), I’m presenting a batch of reviews for movies focused on fathers and the relationships (good or bad) they have with their children. As always, I like to ferret out a wide variety of types, so there are dads who are doin’ a heckuva job,…
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The Buddy System (or, Formula Living Through Odd Couple Chemistry) Review Batch (Part 2): Alien Nation, Armed and Dangerous, Bright, Collision Course, Dead Heat, Feds, Frisco Kid, Hot Pursuit, Loose Cannons, Man, Ride Along, Theodore Rex, Turner & Hooch
You didn’t think we were done, did you? I can’t just do one batch of reviews for buddy action-comedies and leave it at that. It’s right there in the name of the sub-genre—it needs a buddy! This mismatched partner of the first buddy action-comedy post is bringing up the rear in a second look at…
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Pedal to the Metal Review Batch (Part 2): Armour of God, Big Shot, Breakdown, Escape to Athena, Furiosa, Le Casse, Lineup, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, Short Time, Taxi, Transporter 2, Vanishing Point, Violent Rome
The problem with doing review batches the way I do on Cinecaps is that I rarely plan ahead when putting them together. Sometimes, they just happen organically, like if I notice I have a high number of movies based around a single theme or one particular actor/filmmaker in my pool of reviews. Sometimes, I start…
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Random Review Batch: Crisis, Freud’s Last Session, I Saw the TV Glow, Love Me Tender, Mon Oncle, Rat Race, Silent Fall
Today’s batch of random reviews includes Elvis Presley’s first movie, the second one featuring Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot, a foray into adult drama by Debbie Reynolds, Anthony Hopkins as Sigmund Freud, an unsavory psychological thriller/mystery, Cary Grant miscast in a misfire, and one of 2024’s best to date. Crisis (1950) Directed by Richard Brooks. Starring…
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Grading the Franchise: Planet of the Apes
Grading the Franchise is a recurring feature at Cinecaps Digest where I review an entire film series. Today, it’s the science fiction action Planet of the Apes series. I knew the twist ending in advance. I knew some of the famous lines and had a general idea of the story. I’d even seen the Tim…
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TV on the Big Screen Review Batch (Part 3): Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Æon Flux, Baywatch, Bean, Bewitched, Car 54 Where Are You, Dora and the Lost City of Gold, DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, Fall Guy, Miami Vice, Munsters, My Favorite Martian, X-Files
Thirteen more motion pictures based on television shows, and as you’d expect, most of them should have stayed on the small screen (or in our distant memories). Those that do work tend to have little to do with their inspirations or are so close to the source material, the movies came out when the shows…
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Cinema Lit Review Batch (Part 2): Age of Innocence, Anna Karenina, Billy Budd, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Ethan Frome, Farewell to Arms, Heidi, House of the Green Gables, Howards End, Johnny Tremain, Lord of the Flies, Scarlet Letter, Scrooge, White Fang, Wings of the Dove
Coming off a batch of reviews for movies based on famous plays, now I’m looking at motion pictures adapted from classic literature, the sort you were probably assigned to read in middle and high school (and, in a couple of cases, possibly grade school). As it was with the first batch of its kind, several…
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When Good Directors Go Bad Review Batch: Biutiful, Fellini Satyricon, Ghosts of Mars, Health, 1941, One from the Heart, Osterman Weekend, Phobia, Suburbia, Thing Called Love, Viva Zapata, Weight of Water, Wiz
Hey, nobody’s perfect. Certainly not filmmakers. It’s extremely rare for a movie director to have a lengthy career and not drop at least a couple of duds in there. Scorsese had New York, New York and Boxcar Bertha, remember? Hitchcock and Bergman have fumbled a few. Even one of the Coen brothers finally missed the…
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Random Review Batch: Bohemian Girl, Civil War, Executive Suite, Inside Daisy Clover, Monkey Man, One Minute to Zero, Rain, Sting
Today’s batch of random reviews includes a few recent theatrical releases and a bunch of much older ones starring the likes of Joan Crawford, Robert Mitchum, Laurel & Hardy, Robert Redford, and William Holden, among others. Scandalous melodramas, musical comedies, action revenge movies, war romances, monster movies, and more…come and get ’em. The Bohemian Girl…
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Microcaps (Quick Ones (While He’s Away)) Review Batch (Part 6): Black Shield of Falworth, Brand of the Devil, Conquest, Convicted Woman, Damsel, Dead Man’s Eyes, Emperor’s Candlesticks, Four Men and a Prayer, His Private Secretary, Immaculate, In Too Deep, Le Clan des Siciliens, Magnificent Obsession, Night Into Morning, Rhinoceros, Satanic Rites of Dracula, Some Kind of Hero, Terminal Man, Travels with My Aunt, Undercover Man
I’ve got another big bunch of extra-concise capsule reviews for you today, so strap in for some zesty hors d’oeuvres. For those who don’t know or need a refresher, “microcaps” are smaller-than-usual reviews on Cinecaps (125 words or fewer, instead of the more typical 150-350 word length). The reasoning for them being smaller varies, but…