Roy Scheider is the most underrated actor of his generation. I am NOT a crackpot.

The French Connection has kept itself in the classic-films discussion for the better part of five decades based on a single car chase.

Clockers never quite got going for me.

Coming in January: cinemasochism redux!

Bruce Pearson (Robert De Niro), C-plus catcher for the New York Mammoths, finds out before the season begins that he has terminal Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The only other person he entrusts with the information is his …

(or, “Hitchcock Completism Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be”)
Frenzy is adequate. It’s not great; it’s not quite good, even. Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate film is miles better than the stillbirth that preceded it in his …

On The Blotter, I talked about the ambiguity of Zodiac‘s ending with Matt Zoller Seitz and Mike D’Angelo, and reviewed an excellent Jack the Ripper book. (Coming soon: a “compleat Betty Broderick” line-up from me and …

What is film fiber? It’s the movies I feel it’s necessary to have watched in order to participate in the cultural conversation. Canon, in other words, and whether it’s good or enjoyable isn’t the point. …