by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
We have just started shipping out the latest issue of the zine, and I thought it’d be fun to tell you all about it. It’s the spooky season and our topic this time is SLASHERS. If you want to watch before you read, I’ve included links for where you can find the films we’ve discussed.
by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer
In an effort to bring a little of the specialness back to the season, a few years ago I started composing watchlists.
by Matthew Crump, Staff Writer
There’s nothing like a good slasher. Except a bad slasher— especially when it knows it’s bad.
by Melissa Strong, Staff Writer
Special sneak peek at our Summer 2024 print issue featuring cinematic loneliness… Melissa shares a letter of sorts inspired by the 2009 film, A Single Man.
by Matthew Crump, Staff Writer
Special sneak peek at our Summer 2024 print issue featuring cinematic loneliness… Matthew shares their thoughts on Wanda.
by Gary M. Kramer, Staff Writer
For 25 years, Todd Verow has been writing, directing, producing and starring in films that feature extensive, extended and even explicit nudity.
Looking for the perfect gift for that cinephile in your life? You’ve come to the right place.
Read Moreby Matthew Crump, Staff Writer
Whether you’re already a fan of the movies or are just starting to think about diving in, give this listicle a read for a taste of some summer camp terror!
by Fiona Underhill, Contributor
We are lucky to have these interpretations of James’s words on the cinema screen.
by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
Our topic for this zine is “Foreign to Me” and it is a look at films made in a language that we aren’t readily able to understand. We kinda see it as travelling around the world through cinema
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and Circus of Horrors (1960)
by Fiona Underhill
“The circus is a massive machine whose very life depends on discipline, motion and speed
— that meets calamity again and again, but always comes up smiling
— a place where disaster and tragedy stalk the Big Top and ride the circus train
— where Death is constantly watching for one frayed rope, one weak link, or one trace of fear.”
-from the start of Greatest Show on Earth
The notion of ‘running away to join the circus’ has been around for as long as circuses have. Leaving your troubles behind, perhaps assuming a new identity and starting with a fresh life certainly has its appeal. Especially in the 1950s, when the societal pressure to have the perfect job, house, family and consumer goods was high. Two films of this era feature medical doctors who make ‘mistakes’ – driven by either compassion or hubris – and assume new identities in traveling circuses. Doctors have one of the most respected positions in society and obviously one of enormous faith and trust, especially at this time, when it was much more common for doctors to make house calls. The idea of doctors betraying that trust would have been shocking, leading to shame and being ostracized from society. And who are a group of people already living on the fringes, as outcasts? Traveling groups of entertainers – theatrical troupes, circuses or those working for carnivals and fairs.
Read MoreWritten by Anne Speilberg and Gary Ross
Directed by Penny Marshall
Starring Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Perkins and Robert Loggia
Running time 1 hour and 44 minutes
MPAA Rating fantasy, kids and family, comedy
by Stacey Osbeck
When 13 year old Josh Baskin (David Moscow) fails to meet the height requirement and is turned away from a carnival ride in front of his crush, he wanders off to a coin operated Zoltar machine, an animatronic fortune teller with a pointy beard and bejeweled turban. As the wind kicks up and organ grinder music rises, drowning out the din of the fair, Josh pops a quarter in and makes a wish to be big. The next morning Josh gets the shock of his life. Overnight, he’s transformed into a full grown man (Tom Hanks). Of all the body swap films that came out in the late ‘80s Big is easily the best. Big is also the only film I’ve ever seen as a kid and then again as an adult and had two totally different movie experiences.
Read Moreby Ryan Silberstein, The Red Herring
Disney's The Great Movie Ride was a monument to the power of theme parks and cinema.
Read Moreby Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy
Greetings movie friends! As I’m sure most of you know, in addition to our website which mostly covers new movie reviews, we also make a quarterly print zine. I thought it’d be fun to give everyone a quick glance at all the films that are covered in our most recent issue (which focuses on circuses, carnivals and fairs) and where you can find them. Step right up! to follow the links for the titles and it’ll take you to a listing of where it can be found (mostly powered by JustWatch.com).
Read MoreThe Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) and The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Marielle Heller, 2015)
by Fiona Underhill
The Graduate is one of the most enduring and influential classics of the 1960s. It was Dustin Hoffman’s breakthrough role, at the age of 30 (although he was playing 10 years younger) as the protagonist – existential drifter Ben Braddock. After graduating college, Ben is aimless and experiencing ennui. He punctuates the boredom with an affair with his parent’s friend Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft, age 36 but playing ten years older) who he has known his whole life. Despite Ben’s attempts to resist both his own parents and Mr Robinson, at their insistence, he takes out the Robinson’s daughter Elaine (the beautiful Katherine Ross) and ends up falling for her. Things come to a head in a tumultuous final act.
Read MoreNotes on A Summer Place
by Liz Locke, CinemaSips.com
When I think about bad moms, my mind immediately goes to A Summer Place, one of the most melodramatic soap operas ever to grace the silver screen. This film has it all—teen lust, alcoholics, saucy old ladies, infidelity, and (be-still my heart) a Frank Lloyd Wright house. But what makes it stand out from all the other Douglas Sirk-wannabes of the 1950s is Constance Ford as the villainous Helen Jorgenson.
Read Moreby Stacey Osbeck
In the 80s, if a TV station acquired a film they showed it endlessly. So if you’d seen it once, you’d probably seen it a hundred times. This amount of repetition helped movies that already had memorable scenes and original lines to become utterly seared into the minds of the American public. Mommie Dearest (1981), in all its melodramatic glory, was one of the films to benefit from this.