Mat Brewster

“Who is Darkman?” the posters asked. They were scattered everywhere – on billboards, the sides of busses, in magazines in the early summer of 1990. But they didn’t provide an answer. It was a viral marketing campaign before viral marketing was a buzzword. Sam Raimi had invented his own superhero and the studio needed a…

Faithless isn’t a great film, but Bankhead is great in it.

The film’s mystery isn’t who is doing these things but why.

An unconventional Western, or what they now call a revisionist Western.

The film is an utter delight.

With a run time of 79 minutes, it all feels like a really long (and rather good) episode of Dragnet.

A fantastic resource for discovering relatively obscure film noirs.

It is a great-looking set full of Criterion’s usual fantastic packaging full of extras.

The film has everything you’ve come to expect from a submarine movie.

It is something of a blending of genres and styles.

I really love a good Italian Western.

Its influence reaches far and wide including Doctor Who, Stanley Kubrick, and John Carpenter.

It is a film that will linger in your thoughts for days afterward.

The reviews for that one have been pretty mixed, but I’m still excited to get a chance to watch it finally.

Mann is too good of a director to make a really bad movie, but the ridiculousness of the plot of this one ruined it for me.

It is all a bit silly, but it’s fun to watch.

I find myself poised to watch it and am happy to make it my Pick of the Week.

Ron Howard and his team of stunt coordinators used real fire and explosions to create several setpieces that are stunning in their power and beauty.

A huge hit that helped create the rascally, Southern charmer persona Reynolds would stick with for most of his life.

If Scarface was De Palma’s Goodfellas, then Carlito’s Way is his The Irishman.

Coming off the heels of their definitive film noir The Big Heat (1953), director Friz Lang once again teamed up with actors Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame.

They are all clearly B-Pictures, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth your time.

This period shows the studio in transition.

Buster Keaton was one of the biggest stars of the silent screen.

Like the story of Cain and Abel, Force of Evil is a tale about brothers.

Don’t let the fact that you’ve maybe not heard of any of these films put you off; even lesser-known Shaw Brothers films are worth the watching, and some of them are pretty great.

Paramount loaded the films with lots of great extras and put them all together with some cool-looking packaging.

The whole film has that kind of shaggy, “let’s just mess about and see what happens” feel to it.

What makes the film worth watching is the fight sequences.

While Pixar’s track record isn’t as stellar as it once was, they still regularly put out good films and I’m ready to finally see this one.

In a world so full of awfulness, I’ve become a sucker for any little kindness, even when it is only found in a movie.

Even when they aren’t great, there is something calming about a Western.

A complicated, sometimes difficult film.

It stars Natasha Lyonne as a casino worker who has the innate ability to detect when people are lying.

Delon and Belmondo are always magnetic to watch; I just wish the rest of the film had more to say.

They Live is a great time at the movies.

It is, in a word, the best possible set anyone could ever dream of for this series.

Director Henri Decoin tells the story with classic Hollywood filmmaking techniques and drapes it with film noir touches.

Crude, rude, and definitely not for me.

The trailers make it look like a Fargo-esque mystery set in a quirky small town loaded with violence and humor.

The men and women in these films are just ordinary people trying to survive in a hard, vicious world.

Nothing celebrates our independence like buying a bunch of crap and eating out.

For fans of detective stories in classic films, this set is a must-own.

The Oyster Princess is the reason to buy this set, and it’s just lovely.

So much of Caliber 9 is about how the old way of doing things continually bumps into the new ways.

That’s over 17 hours of kung-fu action.

If you can overlook the various plot problems and general sloppiness, you might just have a good time.

A spy thriller, a surprisingly sensitive take on mental illness, and a remake of a Hitchcock classic

If you are a fan of film noir and are looking to go beyond the classics, this is the place you should go.

A delightful, surrealistic, and strange little film.