Christopher Saunders

LATEST ARTICLES ( 632 )

• 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

• Child's Play (1988)

  

  Tom Holland's Child's Play (1988) spawned one of the most enduring slasher movie franchises: Brad Dourif's mass murdering doll Chucky continued terrorizing... Read more

  Posted on 21 October 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House

  

  It seems the perfect time for a fresh fictionalization of Watergate. Peter Landesman's Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House (2017) was in... Read more

  Posted on 12 October 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Steven Universe: The Movie

  

  The 2010s have been a renaissance for Western Animation, with an extraordinary boom of cartoons geared towards both kids (Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Over th... Read more

  Posted on 11 October 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Amityville Horror (1979)

  

  Stuart Rosenberg's The Amityville Horror (1979) is an utterly wretched exercise in "horror." Based on Jay Anson's dubiously "nonfiction" book, it employs every... Read more

  Posted on 09 October 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Cotton Club

  

  (1984) must have seemed like asafe bet to Francis Ford Coppola after the nightmare of Apocalypse Now and his experimental One from the Heart and Rumble Fish. Read more

  Posted on 09 October 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• BlacKkKlansman

  

  Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman (2018) puts its director back into the cultural spotlight, winning him box office and acclaim (including a Best Picture nod) unseen... Read more

  Posted on 24 February 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Ragtime

  

  "I've spent my whole life forgetting. You're a young man. You better start learning now."Milos Forman's Ragtime (1981) commits to an insurmountable task: turnin... Read more

  Posted on 18 February 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Daniel

  

  Sidney Lumet's Daniel (1983) is a glum, curiously muted document. I use that word advisedly; it feels more like a docudrama than a narrative film, so devoid is... Read more

  Posted on 17 February 2019 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Mary Queen of Scots (2018)

  

  Time again to revisit the rivalry between Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart, already the subject of myriad films, novels, plays and most recently a television series. Read more

  Posted on 30 December 2018 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Petrified Forest

  

  "Certainly does feel great to have a real killer around here again!"Archie Mayo's The Petrified Forest (1936) is a curious film, a slow-burn crime drama that's... Read more

  Posted on 05 October 2018 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES