Spanking the Monkey will probably be most notable for today’s viewers for being the first feature film to be written and directed by future Academy Award-winning auteur David O. Russell (Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings). In...
1990s / Comedy / Science Fiction
by Vincent Leo · Published October 27, 2013 · Last modified February 5, 2019
Tim Burton (Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands) takes on comic science fiction in Mars Attacks!, a big-screen narrative version of the cult Topps trading card series from the early 1960s, in which Martian in flying saucers are...
by Vincent Leo · Published April 7, 2013 · Last modified December 27, 2018
The simple, one-sentence plot: Keanu Reeves (Point Break, A Walk in the Clouds) plays LAPD SWAT officer Jack Traven, who is desperately trying to thwart a madman’s plans to explode a city bus with a bomb...
Scent of a Woman is most notable for being the film that finally brought Al Pacino (Glengarry Glen Ross, Dick Tracy) an Oscar. While he has done roles that have been far more deserving of such...
George Zaloom and Les Mayfield, assistants to producer Hilton Green on the set of Psycho II, came up with an idea for another potential sequel. It was a riff on Hitchcock’s Spellbound except with an...
Neil McCauley (De Niro, Casino) is a professional criminal who has earned a living with big “scores”. After pulling off an armored car heist in which three guards are killed, he and his cohorts find they...
1990s / Comedy / Fantasy / Horror
by Vincent Leo · Published February 24, 2013 · Last modified February 20, 2019
Army of Darkness represents the third and (so far) final entry in the Evil Dead trilogy by Sam Raimi (Darkman, The Quick and the Dead), further continuing the trend away from the more straightforward horror of The Evil Dead and...
Martin Scorsese’s lucrative follow-up to Goodfellas sees the director in more of an experimental mood, and the result is intriguing, beguiling and frustrating at the same time. It’s a remake of a noir-ish 1962 thriller starring...
Nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning one for actress Emma Thompson’s (Wit, Nanny McPhee) excellent adaptation (her first screenplay), Sense & Sensibility is the definitive film version of Jane Austen’s classic novel of 1811. Thompson herself stars...
by Vincent Leo · Published February 13, 2012 · Last modified February 21, 2019
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, the man responsible for such greats as Sex Lies and Videotape, Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich and Traffic, this is one of his earlier works, and falls under the “Hidden Gem” category for you seekers...
Reviews from film writer Vince Leo, covering all eras and genres of films from classics to the latest releases.
Film reviews from Vince Leo, from classics to new releases, since 1996.
