Who’s That Knocking at My Door

#21 in my ranking of Martin Scorsese's films. Martin Scorsese's first film was made in three distinct blocks. The first was when he set out to make a short film about the character J.R. played by Harvey Keitel titled Bring on the Dancing Girls. A couple of years later it was expanded with the story…

Advertisement

Elizabethtown

This was the beginning of the end for Cameron Crowe. He has made two movies since, and neither was terribly well received, but it was Elizabethtown that went from anticipation to antipathy, marking what seems to be the rest of his career. It didn't help that the reception at the Toronto International Film Festival was…

Twin Peaks: The Return

#3 in my definitive ranking of David Lynch's films. This really is an 18-hour movie. From beginning to end, it's the same pair of writers, Mark Frost and David Lynch, the same director, Lynch, and the same cast in the same production telling one very long story. That it was released in individual episodes on…

The Naked Prey

Mel Gibson was heavily inspired by The Naked Prey when he made Apocalypto. The second half of Gibson's film is almost a remake of Cornel Wilde's 1966 film about a man with nothing having to run through the wilderness back home being chased by several warriors. Where Gibson's film was an expert and ever-increasing exercise…

My Favorite Year

Mel Brooks welcomes Errol Flynn to Sid Caesar comedy television show in the 1950s, and Jimmy Hoffa tries to ruin it all. That's essentially the plot of this fictionalized recounting of a week in the Saturday evening comedy showbusiness, a vehicle for Peter O'Toole to play a drunk and out of control actor of yesteryear…