100 Greatest Gangster Films: Carlito’s Way, #20
Brian De Palma was worried about doing another Hispanic drug kingpin movie after Scarface. But the story and the acting in Carlito’s Way go in such a different direction that there ended up being few...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: Bonnie and Clyde, #19
“Young people understood this movie instantly,” director Arthur Penn told the Los Angeles Times. “They saw Bonnie and Clyde as rebels like themselves. It was a movie that spoke to a generation in a way...
View ArticleThe Office Recap: ‘A.A.R.M’ (Season 9, Episode 22)
“This” is being Assistant to the Regional Manager (Dwight Schrute) at a paper company that, even if it can survive the death of paper and Schrute leadership, does not have any room for advancement....
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: A Bronx Tale, #18
A Bronx Tale is more than a wonderful portrait of growing up around the mob in the 1960s. Written by Chazz Palminteri, directed by Robert De Niro and starring both, the movie is a primer on life. No...
View ArticleBoldly Going…: A Look Back At The Original The Original Series Star Trek Movies
In preparation for Star Trek Into Darkness, I decided to take a look back at the original The Original Series movies, marathon-style. Of course, I have no way of proving that I went through the films...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: White Heat, #17
This was film noir, movies where evil not only exists, but flourishes. Cagney’s Cody Jarrett isn’t a charismatic outlaw who viewers could vicariously admire, but rather a despicable embodiment of...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: Scarface, #16
A remake of the 1932 classic of the same name starring Paul Muni, Al Pacino’s Scarface is more often compared to his other underworld epics, The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II. All four movies...
View ArticleRevolution Recap: ‘The Longest Day’ (Season 1, Episode 17)
There are a lot of interesting concepts operating within Revolution's borders. Unfortunately, it rarely makes proper use out of any of them. As the season progresses, it’s hard to not be increasingly...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: Reservoir Dogs, #15
Reservoir Dogs is an action film without much action. A crime drama in which you never see the main crime take place. A comedy that makes you sometimes feel uneasy about laughing. A buddy movie where...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: Mean Streets, #14
One of the best things about watching Mean Streets more than 30 years after its debut is that you know what’s coming after this. And so you look and you watch and you listen for little signs—small...
View ArticleMovie Review: Star Trek Into Darkness
By the end, Star Trek Into Darkness ends up feeling too much like a retread of the first feature without offering anything unique or different stylistically or intellectually. The characters are still...
View ArticleThe Office Recap: Finale (Season 9, Episode 23)
"Finale" is about bringing them all together for one last hurrah, and it works emotionally and comically. Unlike “Goodbye Michael,” which was really farewell Steve Carell, this episode says good-bye to...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: Léon: The Professional, #13
He’s a highly efficient—but in many ways naïve—hit man who drinks milk, exercises religiously and seems obsessed with the care and maintenance of a houseplant. She’s a 12-year-old who smokes, curses...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: Once Upon a Time in America, #12
Once Upon a Time in America tells the lifelong tale of a clan of Jewish mobsters. It has two main chapters—set in 1920 and 1933—plus a third chapter, set in 1968. Each chapter deals with power and sex...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: Scarface: The Shame of a Nation, #11
Still, there’s something beyond the stereotypes and the arcane movie talk that makes this a great film. For one, the story it tells remains—as it was then—the American dream come to life: an immigrant...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: Casino, #10
In the opening shot of Casino, a man in a salmon-colored sports jacket climbs into his Lincoln Continental. He turns the key and the car explodes. Then, as director Martin Scorsese explains it, “You...
View ArticleRevolution Recap: ‘Clue’ (Season 1, Episode 18)
Season 1 has progressed in such a way that it's like the show is trying to write itself out of the corner it painted itself in in the “Pilot.” If the series wants to completely reboot itself every...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: The Usual Suspects, #9
The genesis of this complex thriller was a magazine article, or—more accurately—the headline of an article. Director Bryan Singer was thumbing through Spy magazine in 1992 when he turned to a story...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: Donnie Brasco, #8
One of the reasons the movie works so well is the interplay between Pacino and Johnny Depp, who established himself as more than just a pretty-boy actor with his performance here as Joe Pistone. Using...
View ArticleMad Men Recap: “Man with a Plan” and “The Crash” (Season 6, Episodes 7 and 8)
To Don, every woman is either a mother figure or a whore. If Don isn't in control, no one is. He lost his virginity to a whore (no surprise), he's sleeping with a woman now who doesn't really want to...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: The Departed, #7
There are references to Hawthorne, Shakespeare and James Joyce. Conversely, and while we didn’t keep count, the IMDb website notes that the film also includes 237 uses of the word “fuck” or its...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: Little Caesar, #6
Enrico Bandello was the prototype for every film gangster who followed. The tight-fitting three-piece suits, the high-collared shirt and tie, the fedora and the ever-present cigar—Rico brought it all...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: Pulp Fiction, #5
Part of the joy is not always knowing who the good guys are. Tarantino shot Pulp Fiction as a time-twisting weave of stories where villains can become heroes, or a guy peppered with bullets in one...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: On the Waterfront, #4
All these years later, On the Waterfront continues to work as a magnificent bit of drama—and as a gangster movie. The story of a little man caught between principles and loyalties always resonates....
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: Goodfellas, #3
There is no romance here. No looking out for one’s people. No myth of a moral code. Instead, GoodFellas is about psychopaths who steal, kill and ultimately betray each other. It’s two-and-a-half hours...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: The Godfather: Part II, #2
Al Pacino reprises his role as Michael and offers us an Ivy League Machiavelli. He has his father’s cunning and guile, but somewhere along the way lost his compassion. How else do you explain his...
View ArticleRevolution Recap: ‘Children of Men’ (Season 1, Episode 19)
Thankfully, the show gives another reason why it would be dangerous to return power. Sure, we get the usual crap exchange of “we can't do it because people will have guns and be dangerous” with the...
View ArticleMad Men Recap: “The Better Half” (Season 6, Episode 9)
Poor Peggy Olson. She was doing so well, the last time we checked in on her. But in the world of Mad Men, no one gets to balance work, love, and happiness. It's just not in the cards.
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: The Godfather, #1
The Godfather made careers, most notably those of Francis Ford Coppola and Al Pacino, despite the fact that both of them were almost fired during production. All these years later, it’s still thrilling...
View Article100 Greatest Gangster Films: The Pope of Greenwich Village, #21
To appreciate just how well director Stuart Rosenberg and writer Vincent Patrick captured wiseguy street corner ethos in this classic mob tale, you have to understand the meaning of an Italian phrase...
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