The Big Lebowski (1998) Review
The Big Lebowski (1998) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A Raymond Chandler plot handed to a man with no interest in solving it. Failed on release, found its people later, and spawned a festival and something…
Tag: Found Family
Found family is the trope where strangers become the household blood never provided, and audiences never tire of it. This tag collects reviews and essays on found-family stories and why the pattern lands so reliably.
2000sThe Life Aquatic (2004) Review
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Anderson's least loved film and his saddest. A failing documentarian on a converted research vessel, hunting a shark that may not exist, and the…
1990sOut to Sea (1997) Review
Out to Sea (1997) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Lemmon and Matthau as dance hosts on a cruise ship, in the last decent film the pair made together. Slight, warm, and carried entirely by forty years…
2010sMortal (2019) Review
Mortal is what a superhero origin story looks like when the director comes from Norwegian horror cinema instead of from American comic book adaptation. Both films treat supernatural material as if it were happening in a country that has actual…
2010sWhat We Do in the Shadows (2014)
What We Do in the Shadows earns its 8.5 by finding a joke the vampire genre had somehow left lying on the ground for a century. What if immortal creatures of the night still had to argue about whose turn…
2010sStake Land (2010)
Jim Mickle's Stake Land uses vampires as backdrop for a melancholy survival drama. Sometimes the vampires are not the point.
1980sNear Dark (1987)
Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark strips every vampire cliche and builds a Western instead. That tension carries the picture.
1950sWhite Christmas (1954)
White Christmas is Michael Curtiz's 1954 American musical depicting two World War II Army veterans turned singing act, Bob Wallace and Phil Davis, who follow a sister act to a Vermont inn and discover the inn belongs to their former…
2010sA Quiet Place (2018)
John Krasinski directs the post-apocalyptic horror about a family surviving in silence to avoid blind monsters that hunt by sound. A Quiet Place is John Krasinski's 2018 American post-apocalyptic horror film depicting a family surviving in rural silence to avoid…
1940sRemember the Night (1940)
A prosecutor takes a shoplifter home to Indiana for Christmas after her trial is delayed, and they fall in love. Remember the Night is Mitchell Leisen's 1940 American romantic drama about a Manhattan prosecutor who postpones a shoplifter's trial until…
2010sArthur Christmas (2011)
Santa's bumbling son Arthur must deliver a forgotten present before sunrise, using an antique sleigh and his grandfather's wisdom. Arthur Christmas is Sarah Smith's 2011 British-American animated Christmas comedy from Aardman Animations depicting the modern operation of Santa's high-tech global…
1960sRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
Billie Mae Richards voices Rudolph. The special is technically stop-motion puppet animation instead of claymation, executed by Tadahito Mochinaga's animation team at MOM Production in Tokyo.