I was never really much of a fan of Raging Bull.... That film, often praised as the best of the 80s, struck me as an essentially hollow albeit sufficiently flashy film. I don't even consider it to be one of the 20 best films of its own year.

Ordinary People, the film that won Best Picture instead in 1980 faces a different problem. Because of its win, there has been much hate directed toward it and the film undergoes heavy…

A lot of times in the film world, you often hear complaints on how the audience always wants soothing happy endings, even sometimes when they don't fit with the material. But with Little Shop of Horrors, after viewing the original intended ending today, I think the preview audience made the right call....

Before I go further, let me just say that the 1986 theatrical cut of the film is tremendous fun, with wonderful music, a great ensemble cast, great style,…

Sometimes you come across a film that is said to be something clever and original, and you find out it is almost completely the opposite. Glass Onion is one of those instances. Like the earlier Knives Out, I came in wanting to see a zesty murder mystery and it didn't pan out. If anything, both films share a similar problem in that it is all too clear who the killer is, and the script ends up spending too much time…

If anything, this film is one of a kind. It is definitely not a traditional western, and even with some serious patches in there, its not quite like the new neo-Westerns. Instead, this film blends together farce, slapstick, gallows humor (literally as well as figuratively), social satire, an elegy for the Old West, and the age of time. It succeeds with flying colors, even in spite of a slightly sluggish first 10 minutes. But when it does catch fire, shortly…

I'm not usually a fan of recent R-rated comedies, but this one did indeed work for me. Although I already knew about some details of the plot, one of the main reasons I even watched this was because of Rachel McAdams, and she is in fine comic fettle, a true dynamo, here whipping her way through the proceedings with plenty of sass and charm (even though her reading of Amanda Plummer's notorious line from Pulp Fiction doesn't quite reach the…