Movie Rewind

1986’s “8 Million Ways To Die” had everything to be the next L.A. crime noir of it’s time and become a bona fide box office success. It starred Jeff Bridges (son of “SeaHunt” star Lloyd Bridges), who was coming off a string of successful films including “Against All Odds”, “StarMan” and “Jagged Edge”. Bridges was also four years past his …

Any new film from Michael Mann is a cause for celebration, whether it’s one of his masterpieces (“Heat”) or one that flies under the radar (“Manhunter”, “Public Enemies”). While he earns the term filmmaking god, just from directing one movie alone. His  magnum opus “Heat”, that saw screen legends Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino go head to head for the first …

The list of actors who have been considered for the part of James Bond’s 007 is huge. It included: Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Hugh Jackman, Clint Eastwood, Idris Elba, Tom Hiddleston and Burt Reynolds. But have you ever thought about Hannibal Lector? Well maybe not Lector himself but the man who famously played the cannablistic doctor Sir Anthony Hopkins. He’s …

By 1991, the buddy cop and mis matched partner set-up had already taken off and had become a profitable, but a formula that was slowly fizzing out. Surely the most popular of them were 1987’s “Lethal Weapon”, that went on to spawn three sequels. Then there was “48 Hours”, “Running Scared”, “Tango & Cash”, “Midnight Run” and “The Last Boy …

Touchstone Pictures was one of the biggest studios in the 80’s and 90’s, it ran until it became defunct by Disney CEO Robert Iger in 2018. They nearly dominated all other major studios and it’s success as a studio came as a distribution label created and owned by The Walt Disney Company. Releasing feature films under the Touchstone label that …

Together with pianist Ray Manzarek (who I got to meet in one of the best meet and greets I’ve ever experienced, but sadly not long before he passed) and Jim Morrison who both co-founded The Doors during the summer of 1965 in Venice, California. The band consisted of vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John …

I distinctly remember the moment I saw the poster for “Running Scared” hanging up in the lobby of my local movie theater back in 2005. My first and initial reaction was “This can’t be? Are they actually making a remake to ‘Running Scared’?”. Of course the “Running Scared” I’m referring to was the 1986 buddy cop comedy starring Billy Crystal …

Actress Ashley Judd recently made the news after suffering a horrific accident in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Judd who had shattered her leg out in the jungle, had broken it in four different places and suffered nerve damage. She was trapped in the jungle for five hours until someone found her and having to travel fifty five hours …

From the late 1960s, restrictions on sex, nudity and what couldn’t be shown on film were being significantly loosened. The most famous of them came in 1972, with Bernardo Bertolucci’s erotic drama “Last Tango In Paris”, with Marlon Brando. A film that the MPAA awarded an X rating, that later was reclassified as NC-17 and finally releasing an R rated …

The lush 2001 adaptation of Thomas Harris’ novel “Hannibal” is the most darkly, sickly, twisted beautifully shot movie I’ve ever seen. Here we are twenty years later and it’s still one of my favorite Ridley Scott films, my favorite of the Hannibal films and one that still captivates me in so many ways. Made a decade after Jonathan Demme’s five time …