“No One Is Just Anything”: In William Friedkin’s ‘Sorcerer’, Four Reduced Men Must Gamble with Life to Give It Value
By Tim Pelan The film became an obsession. It was to be my magnum opus, the one on which I’d stake my reputation. I…
Interview
40 Years of Hurt, Face-Hugging Dreams of Breathing: Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’
By Tim Pelan Ripley’s words to the Xenomorph in Alien 3 sum up how we all feel: “You’ve been in my life so long,…
Noir Cut to Look of the Period, Not About the Period: The Sunny, Seedy ’50’s Underbelly of Curtis Hanson’s ‘L.A. Confidential’
By Tim Pelan I came to it because of Ellroy. When I read ‘L.A. Confidential,’ I just got hooked on the characters, got caught…
‘Frankenstein’: James Whale’s Macabre Take on One of the Most Sympathetic Characters Ever Created in the World of English Letters
By Koraljka Suton Look! It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive… It’s alive, it’s moving, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, IT’S ALIVE!…
In Search of Our Better Selves: The Rebirth, Redemption and Road Warriors of George Miller’s ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’
By Tim Pelan I just watched ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ again last week, and I tell you I couldn’t direct 30 seconds of that….
The Greater the Truth, the Greater the Damage: ‘The Insider’, Michael Mann’s White-Collar Thrill Ride of Corporate Malfeasance
By Tim Pelan You pay me to go get guys like Wigand, to draw him out. To get him to trust us, to get…
Slaughterhouse Twelve: Robert Aldrich’s ‘The Dirty Dozen’
In the mid-1960s, director Robert Aldrich was coming up for air after the thick stew melodramas of Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, and What Ever Happened to…
Scorsese On the Ropes: The ‘Kamikaze’ Film-Making of ‘Raging Bull’
Scorsese’s Raging Bull is not your dad’s boxing movie. It’s certainly not a story of conventional redemption or hope overcoming the odds. Instead it’s mainly…
‘Atlantic City’: Malle’s Nostalgic Juxtaposition of Deterioration and Renewal
When acclaimed French New Wave director Louis Malle was approached by producer Alexandre Mnouchkine with the idea for a Canadian production certified by the CRTC…
Take It to the Limit One More Time: Michael Mann’s ‘Miami Vice’
Michael Mann’s 2006 big screen revamp of 1980s groundbreaking TV show Miami Vice (Brandon Tartikoff, NBC’s entertainment president scribbled “MTV cops” on a cocktail napkin;…