A 50s atomic-anxiety post-apocalyptic science-fiction 3D B-movie where a species of moon aliens (men in giant gorilla suits and diving helmets with antennas on them) have exterminated the human race using their “death ray.” That is with the exception of about 5-8 immune survivors who live on a dry patch of LA desert, and who spend most of their time playing “house”/frolicking around in the nearby canyon (the children trying not to be bored, the adult couple pawing each other…

One of those rare perfect alignments of material and maker: an oddball-stylist with a deep ion for weirdos and old science-fiction/horror B-movies, and the ultimate symbol of both in the “worst director of all time” Edward D. Wood Jr. A true no-budget avant-garde outsider artist whose deployment of poverty row resources and every bizarre, meager and technically incompetent Halloween store trick he managed to improvise to get his films made; using stock/repeating footage, comically artificial sets/VFX, completely nonsensical dialogue for…

An appropriately blunt and ugly final film for Hollywood B-movie legend Phil Karlson, who had a surprise blockbuster hit on his hands nearing the end of his career with Walking Tall; his merging of a folk hero western with the 70s trend of dirty regional outlaw exploitation actioners and cathartically gruesome post-Dirty Harry vigilante justice movies. Instead of making the sequel that would’ve made both of them a lot more money, he and his charming southern brute star Joe Don…

It feels right that Don Siegel's follow-up to Dirty Harry was finding near-perfect material for directly translating his sturdy, blunt-force filmmaking sensibility and love of technicians/professionals. A heist-gone-wrong thriller with a fairly simple and tense plot involving a gang of small-time crooks led by a former stunt-pilot turned crop-duster turned low-level career criminal Charley Varrick (a wonderfully weary and relaxed Walter Matthau lending some charm and soul to the idea of being “the last of the independents”), who rob a…

A work of experimental no-budget outsider art that deliberately deploys: nonsensical compositions and cutting that will make you question everything you know about film grammar and geography, bizarrely detached alien dialogue that is frequently inane and spoken on the phone to no in particular or completely unrelated to any sort of characterization or plot, crude sub student film paper/wood/tape production design, royalty free sound design/music played through a tin can and extended sequences of amateur blocky 90s CG premonition vision-questing;…

Something of a rebrand for 80s Japanese punk-rocker turned early cyberpunk-dystopia filmmaker Gakuryu Ishii, who took a decade-long break from filmmaking to focus on music projects and came back to Tokyo with this incredibly atmospheric and experimental arthouse psychological horror-procedural.

One centered around a criminal behavior psychiatrist who is lending her expertise to a case involving a killer who is stabbing women in the middle of crowded Monday commutes, and that may or may not be connected to her former…

“Who’s winning?” “Nobody, one side’s just losing slower than the other.” or “Do you ask questions because you want to know the answers or is just something you think a detective should do?”

Pretty bleak and lethargic stuff even by Watergate-era neo-noir standards, in part due to Bonnie & Clyde director Arthur Penn whose credentials when it came to converting demythologizing Old Hollywood genre film shells with naturalistic New Hollywood style was already quite notable, but also Scottish novelist turned Hollywood…

A forgotten and expensive 90s courtroom drama by Oscar-winning screenwriter Steven Zaillian, who beat both Mann’s Erin Brockovich to addressing a similar real-life situation of regular people suffering the legal consequences of simply resisting corporations deliberately poisoning them, in this case via an adaptation of Jonathan Harr’s best-selling exposé on the suspicious uptick of leukemia among residents of Woburn, Massachusetts due to chemicals being dumped into their drinking water. I love this specific subgenre of legal…

As far as the run of 90s Elmore Leonard adaptations go it’s hard to say I don’t prefer the soulful romantic weariness at the center of Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (Grier and Forster are both just so moving together) or the sexy suave excitement Soderbergh brought to Out Of Sight, but this is still a perfectly solid and effortlessly charming merging of Hollywood industry satire, gangster crime-thriller and laid-back hangout movie by former Coen brothers cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld and reliable novel…