The Revenant: Back from the Dead
Leonardo DiCaprio. Photo: 20th Century Fox The movie business is full of strange rumors, exaggerations and lies. As a journalist it is sometimes difficult to navigate around them, especially when…
Training Day
Young cop Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) hopes to rise from the ranks by working with a seasoned narcotics detective (Denzel Washington) but discovers that he is one reason why the…
Imitation Game: Another Beautiful Mind
Benedict Cumberbatch. Photo: The Weinstein Company The title refers to a paper that the brilliant mathematician Alan Turing wrote in 1950 where he introduced his now-famous test of a machine’s…
12 Angry Men: Choosing Life or Death
Photo: United Artists The most famous episode of the CBS anthology series Studio One (1947-1958) is from 1954 and features a teleplay by Reginald Rose. Depicting a process where one…
Interstellar: Escape from Earth
Matthew McConaughey. Photo: Warner The day I saw this movie, I woke up feeling sad over what is a very common dream for me. It had taken me back to…
Wages of Fear: Road to Hell
Photo: Cinédis When this film was made, Yves Montand carried enough clout to reportedly make director Henri-Georges Clouzot change his mind on where to shoot it. Clouzot's original plans were…
Mystic River: Gone Girl
Sean Penn. Photo: Warner After the phenomenal Unforgiven (1992), the movie that won Clint Eastwood an Oscar as director, the aging director went on making a slew of films in…
Il Capitano: Drifting
Antti Reini and Maria Heiskanen. Photo: Sandrews On July 3rd 1988, a married couple and their 15-year-old son were murdered in a small community called Åmsele in northern Sweden. Father…
Breaking Bad: Journey to Damnation
Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston. Photo: AMC On several occasions, Vince Gilligan has pointed out that Breaking Bad could never have existed without The X-Files (1993-2002). The sci-fi show may…
Midnight Express: Trapped in Turkey
Brad Davis. Photo: Columbia When Barack Obama became president, Republicans accused him of embarking on an apology tour. Well, here's an example of a cultural event that did lead to…