Let’s Scare Jessica To Death (1971)

I do like the exchange between monthly Criterion Channel programming and people I follow on Letterboxd tending to watch the same stuff, like a slowly crawling communal experience. I’d heard the title Let’s Scare Jessica To Death (1971) but didn’t really have any idea what it was like, assuming it was a tongue in cheek […]

The Jericho Mile (1979)

Way before Thief and Heat, Michael Mann’s career-long interest in criminals began with first feature, The Jericho Mile (1979), a television movie made for ABC. Based and shot on location in Folsom Prison, with real life inmates as extras, this is both a prison drama and a sports drama. Focusing on Murphy (a taut, muscular […]

Thieves Like Us (1974)

About ten years ago, I purchased Thieves Like Us (1974) on DVD to be a completist on director Robert Altman’s career. After sitting in storage in my family garage inside a box of DVDS, it was finally reclaimed and rediscovered. Thieves Like Us isn’t as talked about in film circles, maybe it doesn’t have the […]

The Cars That Ate Paris (1974)

All I really knew about Peter Weir’s first film The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) was its memorable title and the iconic image of the VW bug covered in spikes, which was used a lot in the advertising that sold it as a genre horror film (and is even referenced in Mad Max: Fury Road). […]

The Hired Hand (1971)

From the beautiful first five minutes of shimmering water, silhouetted figures, dissolving and overlapping images, all made poetic by Bruce Langhorne’s score, I was very into Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand (1971). Thankfully, everything after that made good on that opening’s promise. After the huge success of Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper went to make the […]