Film #66: The Conversation

Gene Hackman and Francis Ford Coppola were white-hot in 1974. Hackman had already delivered Jan Troell's underrated Zandy's Bride with Liv Ullmann, and Coppola was finishing up The Godfather Part II when they quietly eked out The Conversation, one of the most unexpected masterpieces of the 1970s, which landed Coppola the International Grand prize at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. The film follows

Side Orders #4: The Music Edition

I've been fooling around on playlist.com all day making a new set of tunes for my facebook page. My playlists are also a new feature on filmicability; just scroll down the sidebar a bit and you'll see the playlist box ! Honestly, I'm almost as much of a music junkie as I am a movie nut, so be sure that it's a collection worth listening to: it's quite diverse, once you plumb its depths. There's

Film #64: M.A.S.H.

1970's M.A.S.H. had a bottomless effect on me long before I actually got to see it. Imagine being an intelligent nearly seven-year old movie addict and going with his extra-cool parents to the Atlanta's space-agey North-85 Drive-In concession stand around, oh, say, 1973. And, week after week, as you wander amongst the Alice Cooper and Kung Fu pinball machines while your dad orders the movie

Film #63: High Plains Drifter

High Plains Drifter, Clint Eastwood's oddly scary initital directorial foray into the Western genre has Clint himself again playing a silent stranger who ambles into a small desert berg populated only by villains, cowards, and helpless townspeople. When a gang of escaped convicts returns to wreak vengeful havoc on the town, its inhabitants naturally turn to this enigmatic gunman for protection,

Film #62: The Fearless Vampire Killers, or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck

Director Roman Polanski earned another entry in his fantastic streak of masterpieces with 1967's aberrant, charming spoof of vampire movies that has Polanski himself portraying the assistant to a Van Helsing-like vampire hunter (the great Irish actor Jack McGowran), both of whom are determined to crash a grand ball for the undead, where they plan to annihilate all attendees. Former fashion model

Film #61: Duel

Fooling around on IGoogle's video collection, I recently found the full version of Steven Spielberg's 1971 TV movie Duel. Rewatching it again, I'm struck even more inescapably by how different it is from most Spielberg efforts--there's no John Williams music, no Michael Kahn editing, and the dust-splattered photography has a strictly TV-quality of realism to it. Of course, on the other hand, it's

The U.S. of A at 24 Frames Per Second: 200 American Movies Movie-Obsessed Americans Should See

Of course, July 4th has just passed, so I thought I would serve my country in the best way I know how: by talking about our movie heritage. More specifically, I have decided to list 200 important films that I feel best represent the true nature of America, warts and all. I won't bore you with a long intro--I'd rather you read about the movies than subject you to some wind-bagged soliloquy on our