I’m ignorant of a lot of things, but for some reason I thought I knew a little about movies and actors. Turns out I’m just a little tardy on the uptake sometimes. Sundance Film Festival, started by Robert Redford, who played the Sundance Kid…for Some reason I’d never put those things together before. When I [...]

  Movie of the Month: Bonnie and Clyde. Mark and I really aren’t all that snobby, we just like to watch old movies sometimes. And we’d like you to join us.  In this episode we discuss many of the aspects that make this a classic of the New Hollywood.  Warren Beatty went out of his [...]

In our latest podcast, Mark Botts and Ben Bronsink delve deep to pull out every nook and cranny of goodness from much loved (and sometimes much hated) auteur Wes Anderson. How does ‘conflict create connection’? Is Moonrise Kingdom just another boring love story of star-crossed lovers in the likes of Pyramus & Thisbe or Romeo & Juliet? Finally, what [...]

Why let a boy fight a man’s battle? Are the aged soldiers too fear-filled or senile of tactics or depleted of stamina to set feet on earth and hold ground against Goliath? Mark Boots has just written a new piece about In the Valley of Elah. Read it here:  http://markbotts.blogspot.com/

Our newest episode is up: In the Valley of Elah. This is a character-driven, all but forgotten drama starring Tommy Lee Jones and a slew of other top-notch actors.  In our podcast, Mark Botts and I discuss three things about Jones’s character. First, his flaws. Does having a flawed character in a movie, or any [...]

With the success of our Drive episode, we thought we’d take on another 2011 film: Take Shelter. Jeff Nichols and Michael Shannon have worked together before in 2007′s interesting Shotgun Stories. But with a little more imagination and a little bigger budget, Take Shelter is a really great piece of filmwork.

Mark Botts and I recorded the latest episode for Snobby Reviews on Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive. Drive is an amazing, brutal, graphic, surreal film. There are as many interpretations of this film as there are bloodspats in it. Mark and I try to tackle a few tough subjects: for instance, when is it appropriate to [...]

Force of Evil 1948 This is a great example of how film noir can expand to something beyond the usual private detective story. Instead of Philip Marlowe, in Force of Evil, we have a wall street lawyer (think Gordon Gekko ), a man who lives entirely to please himself and make money, mostly by making money [...]

The Glass Menagerie Watching movie versions of plays can be quite excruciating, but with The Glass Menagerie, I was pleasantly surprised.  Not only is the film true to the play, it is filled with some wonderful acting. The funniest thing was the appearance of both Michael Moriarty and Sam Waterston. The original Law & Order district attorney [...]