“The ray that destroyed the space station and knocked us off our course may have originated right here!”
“Oh come off it, how can a bunch of women invent a gizmo like that?”
“Sure, and even if they invented it, how could they aim it? You know how women drivers are!”
In the far off future of 1985…
Read MoreBeing a wife is some heavy sh*t. I in fact was raised to be a wife, an upper-middle class American Jewish wife, to be precise. Obviously this education proved a massive failure, but impressive and ongoing campaigns on the level of Hannibal's pachyderm army were employed…
For Memorial Day, I thought I would talk about the most Memorial Day kind of movie there is, as it’s about war and dying in battle, but it’s not sad or depressing. Production started on September 2, 1945, the exact day that the war ended, and is a tribute to all of the people who lost their lives in that terrible conflict, while also being about a man who refuses to accept his fate…
Read MoreGather round, children, and I will tell you a tale.
Back in the olden days, there was no streaming, no DVRs, no DVDs, no VCRs, no Roku, no cable channels beyond Z Channel, which was a local to LA premium cable channel before the term existed, and it didn’t matter anyway, because we didn’t have it at my house. There were just the broadcast stations ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and the local stations KTLA, KTTV, KCAL, and KCOP…
Read MoreJosh and Benny Safdie have been making low budget films in New York for over ten years, mostly in and around Queens and Manhattan. They’ve been known to just use random people on the streets as their actors. In 2014, they released a movie based on a book written by Arielle Holmes, about her real life as a homeless heroin addict entitled Heaven Knows What. They cast Arielle herself to play the lead. It’s a fantastic film this critic highly recommends, however this piece…
Read MoreI was looking for something to watch, and nothing was really popping for me, so I went over to Prime and what right on the first page was Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles, because I recently put it on my watchlist when I was reminded that I had planned on seeing it in 2019 and then completely forgot about it! So, perfect timing.
For me, Fiddler on the Roof is Zero Mostel. I even saw him play Tevye…
Read MoreIt was sometime in the mid to late 90’s when Martin McDonagh was riding a bus through America. It was somewhere in the southern states where a specific billboard caught his eye. It described a gruesome death, and called out police for not doing anything. “The sign flashed by…
Read MoreMatt (Ed Helms) is a 45 year old single man who knows one thing for certain, that he wants to be a father. So what do you do when you have the means and the desire, but no partner? You find yourself a donor egg and a gestational surrogate, that’s what you do.
Anna (Patti Harrison) is a 26 year old single woman who…
Read MoreAfter the release of In Bruges in 2008, Martin Mcdonagh had a couple of scripts written and ready to go, but decided to take a couple years off to travel. He already had one in mind, and was planning on making his screenplay Seven Psychopaths into his next film. Production on Seven Psychopaths started sometime in early to mid 2011, and was released in North America on October 12th, 2012. The film stars Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken, and Tom Waits.
Colin Farrell plays Marty, a screenwriter trying to finish, or even start his script entitled Seven Psychopaths. One might wonder if Marty…
Read MoreNext week, we celebrate the re-opening of our Secret Movie Club Theater after 15 months of Covid shutdown with a 35mm screening of Steven Spielberg’s 1971 debut feature film Duel.
Before anyone takes us on with the totally valid point that Duel was originally a 75 minute made for TV movie and was only later expanded by 15 minutes to a feature film (released abroad), this Programmer humbly submits that for all intents and purposes, it really should be considered a feature film.
It’s extremely special to this Programmer because it has all the hallmarks…
Read MoreNow that the movie theaters are opening again, and I’m vaccinated and feel comfortable going, they’re kind of scrambling a little for actual movies to put in the theaters!
So there are re-releases going on, and this week they were kind enough to re-release Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, a movie I loved when it first came out, but I had forgotten just how much. I’d say this is a nearly perfect…
Read More"Maybe that's what hell is, the entire rest of eternity spent in Bruges"
Before venturing into film, Martin McDonagh began his career as a playwright. His plays being described as humorous, tragic, and sometimes downright disturbing. Feeling like theater lacked the edge he was really looking for, Martin decided to dip his toes into filmmaking with a short film entitled Six Shooter, which ended up winning an academy award. After it's success, Focus Features agreed to produce a feature film based on McDonagh's screenplay, to be directed by himself called In Bruges.
After a job goes south…
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