Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  A Bronx Tale 1993

  ★★★★ Rewatched 30 Sep 2023

  Opened 30 years ago this weekend. It's easy to slap a "Scorsese-lite" label on Robert De Niro's directorial debut that flopped at the box office (never making it higher than 7th place), but became a mob movie favorite at video stores and through incessant cable airings. The influence of Scorsese and GOODFELLAS is all over the 1960-68-set A BRONX TALE (particularly with the period needle-drops, the voiceover narration, and the introduction of various characters like Tony Toupee and perpetual gambling…

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  Of Unknown Origin 1983

  ★★★ Rewatched 29 Sep 2023

  SHOCKTOBER 2023 #4

  Opened 40 years ago this weekend. The second "home invaded by a large rodent" horror movie of September 1983 following the final segment of the Universal anthology film NIGHTMARES, the Montreal-shot OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN pits upwardly mobile business exec Peter Weller against a very large--and very intelligent--rat that's making his life hell. While numerous members of the Canadian Tax Shelter All-Stars are present--the great Lawrence Dane, Kenneth Welsh, Jennifer Dale, Maury Chaykin, Keith Knight, and Louis "Exploding…

Popular reviews

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  What? 1972

  ★ Watched 07 May 2016

  A moderator has removed this review.

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  Virus 1980

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 29 Feb 2020 7

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  Steven Soderbergh's CONTAGION seems to be everyone's go-to Coronavirus party movie, especially with Typhoid Gwyneth in the news with her vagina-scented candles, but for those of us in the know, future BATTLE ROYALE director Kinji Fukasaku's 1980 cult classic VIRUS is where it's at. A disaster movie so epic that it destroys the world *twice*--first with a pandemic that wipes out everyone on the planet except 855 men and eight women on Antarctica, and then with an accidental nuclear holocaust…