Christopher Saunders

LATEST ARTICLES ( 642 )

• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Beginnings and Eternal

  

  I'll admit it: the appeal of anime eluded me for a long time. Like a lot of Western viewers, I allowed my perception of the genre from stereotypes, cultural... Read more

  Posted on 05 July 2022 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Night of the Lepus

  

  Ever since its release, Night of the Lepus (1972) has been one of Hollywood's greatest jokes. A horror movie about giant, killer rabbits is surely the silliest... Read more

  Posted on 12 June 2022 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Bat People

  

  (1974) is notorious both for its confusing plethora of titles (It Lives By Night, Winged Death, Angel of Fear, etc.) and its appearance on Mystery Science... Read more

  Posted on 11 June 2022 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Black Legion

  

  It says something about Black Legion's (1937) reputation that it's rarely mentioned except as a footnote in Humphrey Bogart's career. Read more

  Posted on 16 May 2021 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Conduct Unbecoming

  

  Michael Anderson's Conduct Unbecoming (1975) is an odd hybrid: part courtroom story, part military drama, part whodunnit. This adaptation of Barry England's pla... Read more

  Posted on 05 April 2021 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Mummy (1999)

  

  I probably watched Stephen Sommers' The Mummy (1999) more than any other film in my adolescence, revisiting it so many times that I broke our VHS tape. Read more

  Posted on 13 March 2021 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Pet Sematary (2019)

  

  With Stephen King adaptations in vogue again, a new version of Pet Sematary was probably inevitable. Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer's 2019 version is... Read more

  Posted on 19 April 2020 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Last Detail

  

  Jack Nicholson's wilder side finds full expression in The Last Detail (1973). Hal Ashby's military road movie comes awfully close to tipping over into cliche... Read more

  Posted on 16 April 2020 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Last Picture Show

  

  Peter Bogdanovich made his name directing Targets (1968) but it was The Last Picture Show (1971) which really put him on the map. Read more

  Posted on 13 April 2020 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Moro Affair

  

  A late entry in Italian political cinema, Giuseppe Ferrara's The Moro Affair (1986) dramatizes postwar Italy's most notorious act of terrorism. Read more

  Posted on 05 April 2020 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Iron Horse

  

  John Ford did more for the Western than any other director. The Iron Horse (1924) wasn't his first, but it's his biggest and most influential, transforming the... Read more

  Posted on 31 December 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• You Only Live Once

  

  One of Fritz Lang's better Hollywood movies, You Only Live Once (1937) is a cynical, angry crime saga. Drawing loosely on Bonnie and Clyde (with an emphasis on... Read more

  Posted on 28 December 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Irishman

  

  Martin Scorsese's The Irishman (2019) has settled, once and for all, the debate about the cinematic legitimacy of Netflix. Even as the streaming service faces... Read more

  Posted on 10 December 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• We Still Kill the Old Way (1967)

  

  marked the first of four collaborations between Elio Petri and Gian Maria Volonte. More subtly political than later works like Investigation of a Citizen Above... Read more

  Posted on 19 November 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Tremors

  

  Ron Underwood's Tremors (1990) enjoys a large and well-deserved cult following. Far better than any movie about killer worms has any right to be, it's an... Read more

  Posted on 28 October 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Charity and the Strange Smell of Money

  

  "It's your funeral, who cares!?! RAWK!!!"The Spaghetti Western has some truly dismal lows, few lower than Charity and the Strange Smell of Money (1973). Read more

  Posted on 26 October 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

  

  Credit A Nightmare for Elm Street (1984) with one of the more inventive horror premises. In many ways, Wes Craven's signature movie is a standard issue... Read more

  Posted on 25 October 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• A Reason to Live, A Reason to Die

  

  Tonino Valerii's A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die (1972) is the sort of Spaghetti Western where the main draw is its over-elaborate English title. Read more

  Posted on 23 October 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Blow Out

  

  "Why the fuck does everything have to be a conspiracy?"Brian De Palma specialized in hyper-stylized pastiches of older movies, with varying degrees of success. Read more

  Posted on 23 October 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Ordinary People

  

  Robert Redford's Ordinary People (1980) is unjustly remembered for "stealing" Best Picture from Raging Bull. Certainly, Redford's directorial debut isn't an... Read more

  Posted on 22 October 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES