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;…
Tim Pelan
‘Goodfellas’: Martin Scorsese’s Anthropological Goodlife Through a Lens
As far back as I can remember, director Martin Scorsese has been synonymous with wiseguys, mooks, goombahs, and spin-on-a-dime funny-how guys delivering a gut punch…
Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Hard Eight’, AKA ‘Sydney’: “It’s Always Good to Meet a New Friend”
Paul Thomas Anderson’s debut film Hard Eight (working title Sydney, preferred by Anderson, thwarted by his backers) arose from the performance of a veteran actor…
God’s Lonely Funny Man: Martin Scorsese’s ‘The King of Comedy’ and America’s Pathological Obsession with Fame
In this age of television wannabes and quick fix celebs, it is fitting to look back at The King of Comedy, Martin Scorsese’s dark comedy…
Empire’s End: John Huston’s ‘The Man Who Would Be King’
On the occasion of John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King screening at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2010 to mark star Sean…
Philip Kaufman’s ‘The Right Stuff’: “A Search Film, a Quest for a Certain Quality that May Have Seen Its Best Days”
The vexed question of patriotism hangs over Damien Chazelle’s First Man, a somber epic that manages to be both a very visceral examination of the…
Beware the Beast Man, For He Is the Devil’s Pawn: Franklin J. Schaffner’s ‘Planet of the Apes’
Oh my God. I’m back. I’m home. All the time, it was… We finally really did it. You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah,…
Downwards Is the Only Way Forwards: Welcome to David Fincher’s ‘The Game’
By Tim Pelan I always wanted to give a lecture at filmschools. You go in and you see all these fresh faces, and you…
‘Horror Implied, as Opposed to Explained… That’s Michael Mann’s Strength (Will)’—‘Manhunter’
In 1986, Michael Mann’s Manhunter elevated schlock-horror to a thoughtful, stylised, forensically psychological level, introducing the concept of a serial killer to a wider base,…
L.A. Breakdown, a Hitman In Crisis: Michael Mann’s ‘Collateral’
When people think of Tom Cruise, what do they see? That shit eating grin, the Scientology, star power? I prefer to think of Cruise as…