Shane Black, who wrote and directed the neo-noir comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, loves to throw together characters who really shouldn’t become friends but do exactly that — usually in spite of their better instincts. Take two characters with very little in common, stick them in circumstances which continue to throw them together when they’d rather be apart, and watch the fireworks pop and burgeoning bromance grow.
In the opening moments of Walk the Line, Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) gently thumbs the edge of a buzzsaw in the wood shop of Folsom Prison moments before his infamous concert before its inmates. The blade of this saw, an instrument which altered the course of Cash’s life when he was eleven years old, [...]
One of the things I most admire about Steven Spielberg is his ability–and his willingness–to balance his desire to make his deepely personal Films with his desire to make big-budget crowd-pleasing popcorn-chomping Flicks. He’s equally adept at making both kinds of movies and has created classic examples of each, though I have to admit [...]
Joan Allen does staid-and-proper so well, she seldom gets the chance to play sexy. In fact, I can’t remember ever finding her particularly sexy in any movie I’ve ever seen her in. I don’t mean that as a knock against Allen; so many of the parts she’s played have called for Frosty Joan [...]
Calling the 1961 comic debut of the Fantastic Four groundbreaking would no doubt elicit a cry of “It’s clobberin’ time!” from super-hero historians and rabid comic fans worldwide. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s vision of a super-powered team filtered through the dynamic of an otherwise normal “family” not only broke new ground, it forged a [...]