Author: Jonathan Eig
Hollywood in the 1970s: 10 Films History Forgot
I became a film fan in the 1970s. It was a good decade, one of the best if we’re ranking Hollywood in such a fashion. It had a number of iconic movies. There were the blockbusters – Jaws and Star Wars – which would rewrite the rules for how Hollywood manufactured its product. There were…
Loving Jake Gyllenhaal: From City Slickers to Nightcrawler
I’ll admit it. I was not always the biggest Jake Gyllenhaal fan. But, as Richard Cohen quoted Nora Ephron at the latter’s funeral, “This is going to be like the movies. We start as enemies and end as friends.” Who better to apply a “like the movies” quote to? The son of a director/screenwriter marriage,…
Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special: The Mysterious and Ineffable
How many movies does it take to establish a pattern? Jeff Nichols, who I have previously placed on my Mt. Rushmore of directors currently in their 30s, has just released his fourth feature film. The first and third – Shotgun Stories and Mud – are realistically grounded and physically violent stories of men searching their…
Reviewing The Clan: Two Sunny Afternoons, One Chaotic Mess
I’m sure if I thought about it for a little while I could come up with plenty of examples of movies which used a non-original pop song, in its entirety, as a piece of its soundtrack. It’s not terribly common because most directors would rather edit to their own rhythms and not that of an…
Have film critics ever had an impact on the box office?
You gotta love Variety. The journalistic bellwether of all things entertainment has studied the massive box office opening for Batman v Superman and considered the Blart-like reviews it has received (currently a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes). Their conclusion? Critics don’t really matter when it comes to a movie’s financial success. Methinks they are late to…