Film #27: My Best Fiend

Werner Herzog's My Best Fiend chronicles the masterful German director's unbelievably volatile relationship with the late actor Klaus Kinski, whom he'd known and worked with for three decades. Before this film hit theaters in 1999, stories of these two massive megalomaniacs locking horns on troubled sets were already part of filmmaking folklore, thanks largely to Les Blank's landmark 1982

Film #26: My Bodyguard

Dave Grusin's jazzy, string-flecked score hits me first every time I see My Bodyguard. It takes me back to 1980 instantly and I am happy for it. It's bouncy, joyful, mopey, and erudite. It exemplifies Chicago--where this movie was filmed--all in a few bars. In fact, the only things that remind me of Chicago more than My Bodyguard are John Hughes movies, The Bob Newhart Show, and...Chicago.

Film #25: The Incredible Melting Man

The Incredible Melting Man is one of those "good bad-movies" that people with a taste for irony or simply with a lot of time on their hands seem to love. I have a lot of these guilty pleasures way on down my extensive list of favorites, but I find as I get older, I have less time for things that suck. But this movie--this one was an event I'll always remember from my childhood,so I guess I

Film #24: Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)

If you're looking for the greatest car chase movie in history, I’ve got it. It’s not The Fast and the Furious, or Bullitt, or The French Connection, or The Italian Job or The Seven-Ups. And it’s not the crappy Nicholas Cage remake that bears this movie’s title. It’s H.B. Halicki’s 1974 drive-in masterpiece Gone in 60 Seconds. The title refers to the time it takes for this movie’s thieving

Film #23: American Movie

It’s hard to make a movie. Think of it like building a car engine. You have to get all these parts, big and little, and fit them all together until the thing runs. Movies are also machines, and they have essential elements that become small when seen as part of the whole. The art direction, the catering, the casting, the loading of the camera…without any of these and many more elements, the

Film #22: The Reflecting Skin

This grotesque and downbeat destruction-of-innocence story has Jeremy Cooper playing Seth, a Midwestern ‘50s-era boy whose less-than-stellar upbringing by his pedophile father and mentally diseased mother results in his decidedly off-kilter worldview. Among his fears and delusions are that the pale redhead down the road is a vampire and that the withered fetus he finds in a barn is the

Film #21: Gregory's Girl

Scottish filmmaker Bill Forsyth specializes in what I call "Saturday Afternoon Movies." You know how you feel on a Saturday afternoon...as if everything is in store for you, as if the air is cleaner than the days before, excitement is flooding your veins and all your stresses have dissipated into the past? Most of Forsyth's films make you feel like that, even on non-Saturdays. But catch them