Streaming services license titles for limited amounts of time. These titles have become available in the month of May: Amazon Prime Age of Adaline, The Alien: Resurrection Alien 3 Aliens Almost Famous Angels & Demons Betrayed Bound Da Vinci Code, The Dalton Girls, The Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo Dinosaur 13 Fascination Flight Flightplan French … Read more
Top Four Films of 2020 Nothing released last year came close to the best of 2019: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Parasite and The Irishman. Overall, it was a down year and probably would have been even without Covid. Still, here are my own four best and seven pretty good (all available on streaming … Read more
Mike’s Thirteen Favorite Westerns Recently, a radio listener asked for my four favorite Westerns. You know how it is with lists; once you start, it’s hard to stop. So, right now, the first four are my own favorites. Tomorrow, the order might change. I know that all of these are available on DVD. I’m not … Read more
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood The Irishman Parasite (They Shall Not Grow Old) These are three of the finest films I’ve ever seen. Full stop. The rest of the field in 2019 or virtually any other year doesn’t even come close, and that’s why my list is limited to these narrative features (plus … Read more
Mary Poppins Returns and Roma: One is a carefully constructed studio entertainment, the other a lyrical black and white memory of childhood. Both of them reminded me of what films used to be, and how powerful they still can be. Crazy Rich Asians may not have reinvented the romantic comedy, but it certainly breathed fresh … Read more
Soft Touch. By John D. MacDonald John D. MacDonald did not often venture into true noir, the literary territory of James M. Cain, Cornell Woolrich and Jim Thompson. MacDonald was every bit as interested in the darker elements as they were—see The End of the Night or On the Run among others—but he usually brought … Read more
Best Films of 2016 Hell or High Water. Throwback to the great gritty ‘70s thrillers about brothers robbing banks and the about-to-retire Texas Ranger who’s chasing them, with a subtle satisfying twist at the end. Tower. Documentary about Charles Whitman, the sniper who opened fire on the University of Texas campus in 1966. A moving … Read more
Rob Hart noted in his Bouchercon blog that this year’s convention skewed young. He’s right. My first Bouchercon was 1988 in San Diego. I was on a reviewing and criticism panel chaired by Charles Champlin. A year later in Philadelphia, I chaired a similar panel. (All did not go well; something we said so offended … Read more
Best DVDs and pay-per-views of 2015 John Wick – Keanu Reeves stars as a hitman who comes out of retirement in a refreshingly old-school action piece. The Homesman – Tommy Lee Jones directed and stars as a drifter who is forced to lead a group of women across pre-Civil War Nebraska. With Hilary Swank. … Read more