Cotton Comes To Harlem
Ossie Davis makes his directorial debut a smashing success in the trend-setting action crime comedy Cotton Comes To Harlem. Coffin Ed (Raymond St. Jacques) and Grave Digger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge), two plainclothesmen on the Harlem detail, are assigned to investigate…
Camel Spiders
The movie-factory known as Roger Corman Presents is in fine form with this schlock-tastic monster movie. Fast-paced and stupid-as-hell, this is a creature feature that won’t challenge you on any level. You want big bugs? You got ’em! You want…
Rating The Movies
A comedy version of the TV undercover drama “21 Jump Street” is sneaking up on critics and earning strong reviews in its opening weekend. Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill play police officers who pretend to be high school students to…
Battleship
Battleship director Peter Berg has a rather amusing way of admitting that many people are skeptical about a movie based on a Hasbro board game: ”It didn’t lend itself to the most logical interpretation for a film.” But at the…
Show It Again Sam
How will you celebrate the 70th anniversary of Casablanca? You’ve got three new options. You can see the cherished classic in a special presentation at movie theaters. You can buy a fresh edition to savor at home. And just for…
John Dies At The End
Even with its relatively limited resources, John Dies at the End creates a bigger and more involving world than most films with over 20 times its budget. This is one crazy world filled with even crazier characters. Writer/director Don Coscarelli‘s…
Nordic Genre-Film Invasion
Iron Sky is a movie about moon Nazis. The hook is brilliant — they had us at “moon Nazis” — but given that outrageous premise, the resulting film could easily have wound up as B-movie nonsense. Surprisingly, Iron Sky succeeds…
Leprechaun Redux
Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, Lionsgate has announced it will be rebooting the ‘Leprechaun’ franchise, which previously featured fan-favorite Warwick Davis as the titular… uh, monster. We’ve already seen famous cinematic boogeymen like Leatherface, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers,…
Mumbai B
Rajshri Productions has a lot to answer for—the revival of the cloying joint family drama, preternaturally clever Pomeranians—but let’s give praise where it’s due. The banner has produced and distributed several interesting Hindi films over the years, many of which…
The Best of SXSW
The Cabin in the Woods The less you know going into Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods the better. From the trailer, we can glean that the movie, which premiered at this year’s SXSW film festival, starts as your…
Story Notes for Escape From L.A.
Escape from L.A. (1996) is the sequel to the 1981 cult movie Escape from New York. The budget for Escape from L.A. was over eight times bigger than the original movie. In Escape from New York, prisoners had the option…
Sin City 2
We’ve heard him say it a million times in the past but Robert Rodriguez has once again claimed that the extremely long-gestating Sin City 2 will begin production this summer. The Austin filmmaker was speaking at the South by Southwest…
Monster Man
It seems impossibly retro in this computer-generated age, but at least one guy is still creating creepy movie effects out of resin and blood bottles. His name is Cleve Hall, and he’s the title figure of “Monster Man,” a…
Brother From Another Planet
Stars Joe Morton, Picked up as homeless, he is deposited in Harlem. The sweet-natured and honest Brother looks like any other black man, except that he is mute and – although other characters in the film never see them…
Larry Cohen
Larry Cohen was born in New York’s Washington Heights district in 1941 and was educated at the City College of New York. He was interested in cinema from a very early age and exhibited a precocious interest in comic books….
The Stuff
A workman discovers some mushy white foam at an petroleum refinery in Alaska, and he gets the urge to try it and surprisingly it’s tastes really good. Soon enough, it’s a top-selling American dessert product known as “The Stuff” and…
The Boondock Saints Game
The film’s storyline followed two Irish brothers in Boston who, after becoming entangled with the local Russian Mafia, set out to rid the city of its criminal faction. Actors Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus and David Della Rocco will lend…
2nd Trailer Released For Prometheus
Much like the run up to its first trailer in December, the upcoming second trailer for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus has its own 20-second teaser. It features a few new blink-and-you’ll-miss-them glimpses of the film, primarily of the vast-foreboding-alien-planet-landscape variety. Everything…
Iron Sky Review
There are no half-measures when it comes to moon Nazis. The very phrase “moon Nazi” invites laughter. There’s no room for serious consideration, and even biting satire can be a stretch. It’s a goofy premise ripe for B-movie fun, and…
Jean-Pierre Aumont
Aumont was born Jean-Pierre Philippe Salomons in Paris, the son of Suzanne (née Cahen), an actress, and Alexandre Salomons, owner of La Maison du Blanc (a linen department store). His mother’s uncle was well-known stage actor Georges Berr (died 1942)….