At The Movies with Bryan, the Wannabe Filmmaker

In high school, there was a book that I constantly checked out from the library called The Great Movies by William Bayer; it was essentially a greatest movies ever list, but what made Bayer's book so compelling was that instead of choosing 100 movies, he chose 60. He made his selections by choosing 12 genres of film and then choosing five movies from each genre, hence the 60 movies. It was to my utter joy that years later I was able to locate a copy online and purchase it for an extremely low price ($7.99).  What's amazing about Bayer's book is that  he was well ahead of the curve in his selections; the book was published in 1973 and a lot of his selections were from the 60s. Among the films he chose were: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Psycho, Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider, The Manchurian Candidate, Contempt, and A Hard Day's Night. These films often are found on most critics greatest movies list, but in 1973 these films were fairly recent and it was simply ( at least at th

I have decided to make this blog a bit more classier by a reviewing a respected movie...a respected FOREIGN MOVIE! When I first saw Mr. Hulot's Holiday on TCM, I was rather underwhelmed with it. "This is a classic?" I ask myself, utterly confused by what I had just seen. There's no character development, no narrative, and no ending. Yet, the images managed to stay with me that when it was on television again, I decided to give it another try and not surprisingly, I WAS IMPRESSED. I began to notice things that I had notice before in previous viewings; characters who were in the background become more prevalent this time and Hulot's relationship with the pretty blond took on a deeper meaning. Roger Ebert sums up   Mr. Hulot's Holiday best, when he wrote in his review: Let me try to explain my relationship with ``Hulot.'' The first time I saw it, I expected something along the lines of a Hollywood screwball comedy. Instead, the movie opens with its

Growing up in the 80s my family didn't have cable, but my Aunt and Uncle did. Whenever there was a family get together, my dad would give them a couple of blank VHS cassette tapes and they would record movies for us (they had HBO).  Here's just some of the films that they recorded for us off of cable: Aliens, Big Trouble In Little China, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Karate Kid, Sesame Street Presents Follow That Bird,  and Ninja III: The Domination, to name a few. My sister and I watched Ninja III: The Domination so much when we were kids that we inevitable wore out the tape. When I was a kid I thought  Sho Kosugi was the epitome of awesome, with his eye patch and his extremely calm demeanor; the guy never breaks a sweat, even though he is up against the ghost of an evil ninja.  Hell, I still think Sho Kosugi is the epitome of awesome. For the longest time I never knew which series Ninja III belonged to, as there is no Ninja I and Ninja II.