The Life of Emile Zola

The title of The Life of Emile Zola is not quite accurate. It does dramatize portions of Zola's earlier climb in the French literary world, but only briefly. The bulk of the film is dedicated to the Dreyfus Affair and Zola's involvement in it, culminating in his libel trial against members of the French army…

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The Best Picture Winners at the Oscars: A Statement of Purpose Part II

Well, I'm back at it. Not much more to say, but I'll just add that this is where my previous reviewing is going to bite me a bit. Instead of doing ten like I would like to do, I've actually reviewed four of the next ten already, so to keep up with my preferred output,…

Ralph Bakshi: The Definitive Ranking

Hey! An actual top ten! That hasn't happened in a while. I had a better time going through Wes Craven's body of work than this. The bright spots of Ralph Bakshi's career rise all the way to the pinnacle of mediocrity (interesting mediocrity, I should add), while the rest of it gets mired in different…

Cool and the Crazy

#8 in my ranking of Ralph Bakshi's filmography. With Cool World being a critical and commercial bust, Ralph Bakshi found his last feature film work making a movie for Showtime based on a script he'd had laying around for more than twenty years. Well, it certainly does feel like the work of a much younger…

Cool World

#7 in my ranking of Ralph Bakshi's filmography. There were production troubles with Cool World, and some of that blame can be placed on Kim Basinger. Reportedly, Basinger approached Ralph Bakshi and the producer, Frank Mancuso, halfway through production saying she wanted to make a film that she could show to sick children in hospitals.…