AW has written 286 reviews for films during 2023.
-
The Fall of the House of Usher 2023
There’s not going to be spoilers. But if you want to go in blind. I respect that. The short answer is that it’s good. Really good.
The Fall of the House of Usher is a beautiful pitch perfect literate horror that’s most certainly horror. Mike Flanagan and his writers, cast, and craftspeople have created a melding of the work of Edgar Allan Poe and the evisceration of the modern-day Elites. The result is something that…
-
Blackhat 2015
Movies slip through the cracks. Blackhat is one of those films. The Michael Mann globetrotting cyber thriller is as many of Mann’s filmography, ahead of its time. Audiences’ tastes and intelligence have started to catch up to what director Mann created in the fast-paced on-the-run global thriller. One only needs to see the success of his recent debut novel Heat 2. A novel that uses the same sort of global spanning tactics used in Blackhat…
-
Missing in Action 1984
For a Rambo: First Blood Part II rip off it’s a helluva actioner that Joseph Zito has put together. Zito’s grounded and hard-hitting direction is the reason that from head to toe the original Missing in Action is one of the best of the Low Budget Vietnam thrillers. In fact, the first thirty minutes is primarily setting the stage for the action. There are brief moments of Braddock (Norris) doing his thing but it isn’t…
-
Secret Admirer 1985
Secret Admirer after a rough start becomes a clever screwball comedy-inspired play on Cyrano de Bergerac. Teens fall in love and adults’ lives are complicated in this tale of mistaken love letters and cross-communication.
In the first fifteen minutes of Secret Admirer, you may be prone to turn it off. It runs the gamut of raunchy teen sex comedy clichés.
- Hero Kid a fucking slob? Check.
- The “nerdy heroine” isn’t Nerdy… -
Goodbye, Don Glees! 2021
Some genres never wear out their welcome. The genres are so elastic they defy conventional wear and tear. The Coming-of-Age story is one of them. The genre as is the case with writer/director Atsuko Ishizuka’s Goodbye, Don Glees! is able to speak to a specific generation better than others because of the understanding of that generation’s particular concerns.
Toto and Roma have always been friends. Shunned and bullied they’ve created their own club –…
-
The Man in the Iron Mask 1998
Two and half decades have not done any favors for The Man in the Iron Mask. The Randall Wallace adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas classic and final tale of Athos, Porthos, Amaris, and D’Artagnan. The film takes the film away from the Four Musketeers and beefs up the Phillip/Louis dual role for Leonardo DiCaprio with various degrees of success.
Set close to twenty years after the events of what people know as The Three…
-
The Warriors 1979
I still remember seeing The Warriors for the first time. It was a late-night showing on TNT. I had never seen anything like it. I was thirteen at the time. I was familiar with Walter Hill and his signature style. 48HRS, Another 48HRS, Extreme Prejudice, and Streets of Fire were already personal favorites. This even amongst his filmography was different from the opening moments of Coney Island’s Wonder Wheel in the black of night. …
-
The Vagrant 1992
Some movies tickle you in the right way. No matter how mean they are they manage to make you laugh. No matter how gross-out disgusting they get you can’t help but giggle through the gagging. The Vagrant is just that sort of film, deeply disturbing but laugh-out-loud funny. Thanks in large part to the go-for-broke performance by the late-great Bill Paxton.
Early ‘90s yuppie – look up the term kids – Graham Krakowski (Paxton) has…
-
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story 2022
Award Season is upon us. All the prestige pictures are being prepped for their marathon run to the end of the line. Social Dramas. Costume Dramas. Of course, the most sortied or awarded fodder … the Bio-Pic. Even more sortied-er (is that a word) is the Musical Bio-Pic. In fact, back in 2022, there were multiple. In 2023 there are just as many – we see you Bradley Cooper and those make-up appliances trying to…
-
Big Time Gambling Boss 1968
Some films hit you in the right way. This reviewer was taken aback by how sharp and exacting Big Time Gambling Boss is in half the runtime that some of the epics of the genre can muster. Director Kosaku Yamashita working with screenwriter Kazuo Kasahara create a twisted soberingly ruthless piece of criminal melodrama.
When a brain aneurysm takes out Yakuza Boss the succession for a new Boss begins. Shinjiro Naka (Koji Tsuruta) thinks…
-
-
Sinner: The Secret Diary of a Nymphomaniac 1973
Note: The film depicts graphic sexual acts shown in graphic detail. Additionally, they do include sexual assault.
For a film about a Nymphomaniac, this particular Jess Franco film is interesting in the way that it shows behavior with some really forward-thinking ideas. Yes, there are copious amounts of graphic sex. There is a sense of voyeuristic fetishization to it all as much was the case with Franco’s work. Where Sinner: The Secret Diary of…