Category Archives: Rest in Peace

Frigid Winter Warming Spectacular: Best Nuclear Explosion! (Pt. 2)

There’s little doubt my six or so loyal readers gobbled up Part One at a single sitting and, barely satiated, started pounding silverware on the table demanding more destruction porn. Let me oblige posthaste. As you’ll recall, we critiqued Hollywood’s take on nuclear explosions in six films: Asteroid City, The Dark Knight Rises, The Day After, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Failsafe and Fat Man and Little Boy. Let’s now light the fuse on our next five!

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RIP Michael Gambon

It’s easy to roll one’s eyes at popular culture, especially something as overwhelming as the eight-film Harry Potter series, which parked itself in cinemas worldwide for a full decade back when the millennium still had that new-car smell. Whether a supporter or disparager of the films (truth be told I side with the former, beginning with the Alfonso Cuarón-helmed Prisoner of Azkaban), one has to admit the series introduced a generation of young movie goers to a murderers’ row of British acting legends, many of whom they otherwise probably Continue reading

Tanya Robert Retrospective, Part 2

Tanya Roberts may be gone, but she’s not forgotten to The Conflicted Film Snob. Far from it.

In Part One of this retrospective, we tackled 1983’s Storia d’armi e d’amori and the 1982 sword-and-sandal classic, Beastmaster. Without further ado, let’s knock out two other major works from Roberts’ filmography and get some closure on what is her finest performance/movie appearance.

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Tanya Roberts Retrospective, Part 1

It’s been over two years since one of our greatest thespians, Victoria Leigh Blum, known to the world as Tanya Roberts, was taken from us not once, but twice, the first instance by way of a premature announcement by her itchy-trigger-fingered publicist and then, just days later, the definitive word from Cedars-Sinai Hospital: our angel spread her wings for heaven at the tender age of 71.

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Film Adaptations of John le Carré’s Novels: Part 3

For those monitoring my potential windfall (outlined here, here and here), the $28,324,275.00 promised by Mrs. Renate Magdalena Settnik of Burkina Faso never materialized. And while there’s no denying this turn of events has caused me some financial distress (audits, wage garnishment, bankruptcy, etc.), for those of you engaged in a self-satisfied smirk (What kind of moron reads unsolicited emails from war widows, let alone provides his home address, social security and account/routing numbers?), let me ask Continue reading

The Greatest Movie You’ve Maybe Never Heard Of…

When you think of a perfect film what comes to mind?

Citizen Kane, perhaps? Hitchcock’s Vertigo? The Godfather? The Rules of the Game? Chinatown? Some other auteur-helmed flick listed in Sight & Sound magazine’s once-a-decade “Greatest Films of All Time” list?

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Mel Brooks and the Art of Not Particularly Funny…

Happy 2021. Sorry for the lack on content; I’ve been busy attempting to be the best version of me, for me, in what promises to be an exciting new year of quarantining.

A bit of exciting news to report to those who have nothing else going on in their lives: currently working on a long-form post tackling a very important subject. Stay tuned!

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RIP Seymour Cassell

A quickie before I disappear down that rabbit hole known as the 2019 Masters Tournament…

I won’t bore you with a full write-up of the life and times of the character actor Seymour Cassell, probably best known to cineastes as a regular in

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RIP Nipsey Russell!

I don’t know about you, but I’m really struggling with the news that comedian, poet and dancer Nipsey Russell was gunned down in L.A. on Sunday, March 31, 2019. Admittedly, one of the things that’s making it more difficult to process my grief is that I could’ve sworn Russell died a while back.

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Un Film Français Épique en Deux Parties!

As we spiral deeper into yet another dark and hopeless Chicago winter, were you lucky enough to peek through the CFS’s hoarfrosted window you might just spy me thumbing through my mighty physical media collection in search of content that takes place in a warm locale and—to remind me that I don’t have it so bad after all—features emotional and physical catastrophes of Shakespearean magnitude. (Frankly, just typing that sentence reduced my Seasonal Affective Disorder by 18%.)

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