Originally written 26 November 2008 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission. Following the 2005 release of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, there was some excitement over the possibility that...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/milk-2008-gus-van-sant.html
Originally written 5 November 2008 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission. One of the first thoughts that occurred to me after watching Jorge Grau’s Let Sleeping Corpses Lie was how small...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/let-sleeping-corpses-lie-1974-jorge.html
Originally written 28 May 2009 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission. One of Christopher Walken’s greatest assets as an actor is his unpredictability. Watching Walken onscreen, it’s ha...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/king-of-new-york-1990-abel-ferrara.html
Originally written 29 April 2009 on The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission. The “late period” films of Federico Fellini are one of the major blind spots in my moviewatching history. I’ve ...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/juliet-of-spirits-1965-federico-fellini.html
Originally written 13 December 2008 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission. The 1990 holiday movie slate boasted a number of sure-fire hits from many of Hollywood’s most bankable names. A...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/home-alone-1990-chris-columbus.html
Originally written 9 April 2009 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission. With more than 270 adaptations of his work listed on the Internet Movie Database, Charles Dickens is one of the most-...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/great-expectations-1946-david-lean.html
Originally posted 1 April 2009 on The Screengrab for the 2009 White Elephant Blogathon. Reprinted by permission. It’s been said that the two cinematic qualities that one can’t be objective a...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/flesh-gordon-1974-michael-benveniste.html
Originally written 28 April 2009 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission. In some ways, it isn’t hard to determine why Norman Jewison’s big-screen adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof was a...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/fiddler-on-roof-1971-norman-jewison.html
Originally written 26 March 2009 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission. Like many people, my introduction to George Barry’s Death Bed: The Bed That Eats came through the stand-up comedy ...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/death-bed-bed-that-eats-1977-george.html
Originally written 9 November 2008 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission. If one reads enough movie reviews and articles, eventually the expression “critic-proof” will emerge. Normally...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/chelsea-girls-1966-andy-warhol.html
Originally written 11 November 2008 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission. Of all the prestige projects of the 1990 awards season, few had more potential than The Bonfire of the Vanities. ...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/bonfire-of-vanities-1990-brian-depalma.html
Originally written on 20 May 2009 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission. When I first hit upon the idea for Yesterday’s Hits about a year and a half ago, the idea was to look at movies t...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/birth-of-nation-1915-dw-griffith.html
Originally written 17 December 2008 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission. Watching Chris Bell’s Bigger, Stronger, Faster* (*The Side Effects of Being American), the first thing that I n...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/bigger-stronger-faster-2008-chris-bell.html
Originally written 11 May 2009 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission. The conventional wisdom regarding cinematic plot twists is that they be unexpected. This means that either the audienc...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/angel-heart-1987-alan-parker.html
Originally written 12 December 2008 for The Screengrab. Reposted by permission. Since its premiere on the fall festival circuit, Danny Boyle’s new film Slumdog Millionaire has ridden a wave of...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/life-less-ordinary-1997-danny-boyle.html
Originally written 20 November 2008 for The Screengrab. Reprinted by permission. Quantum of Solace may have opened already, but I’m still jonesing for that old Bond feeling. Perhaps it was the...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2010/10/double-review-thunderball-1965-and.html
Titanic (James Cameron) Love Story (Arthur Hiller) The Blair Witch Project (Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick) Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson) Smokey and the Bandit (Hal Needham) The Bells of ...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2008/08/yesterdays-hits.html
Ready to Wear (Robert Altman) Exorcist II: The Heretic (John Boorman) 1941 (Steven Spielberg) The Serpent's Egg (Ingmar Bergman) Art School Confidential (Terry Zwigoff) New York, New York (...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2007/09/when-good-directors-go-bad.html
Baxter (Jerome Boivin) Zulu (Cy Endfield) Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (Kenji Misumi) The New Kids (Sean S. Cunningham) Faithless (Liv Ullmann) 3 on a Meathook (William Girdler) The A...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2008/08/reviews-by-request.html
The Girl Can't Help It (Frank Tashlin) The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi) 8 Women (Francois Ozon) A Fish Called Wanda (Charles Crichton) Nashville (Robert Altman) Belle de Jour (Luis Bu...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2007/09/movie-moment-posts.html
Top 10: The Best Nude Scenes of 2006 Top 10: The Most Dangerous Films of All Time Top 14: The Kinkiest Films Ever Made Top 10: The Worst Accents in Movie History Top 10: The Most Important Nu...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2007/09/screengrab-lists.html
Oscar Predictions 2007 - my very first post. Kindly keep the laughter to a minimum. Live-Blogging (Sorta) the Oscars - OK, not really. But I took notes, so shouldn't that be enough for you? Of Ge...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2007/10/other-notable-screengrab-posts.html
The number in parentheses is the number of films I've seen from the corresponding director. I've only included directors here by whom I've seen five or more films. The list of directors I've only...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2007/05/directors-ranked-by-average-rating.html
This is the list of all directors for whom I've seen four films. All I need to do is see one more and they'll be able to sit at the grown-ups' table . As you can see, there are some serious top 1...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2007/05/on-deck-circle-only-for-uh-directors.html
My top 25: Robert Altman Ingmar Bergman Robert Bresson Luis Bunuel John Cassavetes Jean Cocteau Jacques Demy Brian DePalma Jean-Luc Godard Alfred Hitchcock Buster Keaton Krzystzof Kieslowski Stan...
http://opalfilmsarchive.blogspot.com/2007/04/my-favorite-filmmakers-comments-to-come.html