Werewolves in cinema have had many incarnations, but most modern lore stems from the 1941 Universal picture The Wolf Man. The unforgettable image of a monstrously deformed Lon Chaney, Jr. thrusting out his chest, baring his claws, and baying at the full moon is one of Hollywood’s most lasting. Director Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman, also a Universal production, is a pitch-perfect reboot of the classic horror movie.

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Criterion, you are the Pixar of DVD distributors. Every film you release is guaranteed to be of a significant quality (or, in the case of films like Equinox or The Rock, at least a significant cultural impact), presented with the finest picture quality possible, and usually with special features that actually deserve to be called special. But, since you’re not a production company, you don’t actually own any of the films you release, and occasionally the companies that do own them ask for the rights back. In the past, Criterion editions of The Silence of the Lambs or Robocop actually constituted status symbols amongst DVD collectors: You either had them or you didn’t, and deserved to be pitied. Now, alas, hot on the heels of The Third Man going out of print (pick up their gorgeous Blu-Ray edition while you still can), Criterion has announced some more DVDs, and in some cases Blu-Rays that will no longer be released by their company, and returned to the care of Studio Canal.

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Or maybe you’re just like me, single on the most romantic night of the year, drowning your sorrows in mint chocolate chip ice cream and booze, and thoroughly unsold on the conventional love stories Hollywood repeatedly markets to boundless optimists. Either way, you’re going to need an unconventional romance right now, and here are my picks of three of the four best ever made.

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No, you don’t have to watch The Blind Side. I’ve got your back.

This year, for the first time in almost sixty years, there are ten nominees for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. And you know what that means… now there are even more movies that you probably haven’t seen yet. I’ve put together the [...]

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Today, as you may have noticed, is a day of many, many interviews. In addition to interviewing the lovely and insightful Julia Rhodes, I also had the opportunity to interview Mick Garris, a horror filmmaker best known for the “Masters of Horror” television series, and of course the landmark Stephen King TV mini-series The Stand. We discussed his new show “Post Mortem,” his work with Stephen King, and his early work on such films as The Fly 2 and, most importantly, Critters 2: The Main Course.

This article is filed under Horror, Movies, The Fourth Wall.

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Fourth Wall, in which we California Literary Review film critics talk more directly to our audience. Uncertain where to begin, we decided start this process by getting to know our other humble bloggers. Today we start with the film critic with the most CLR seniority, Julia Rhodes, as interviewed by William Bibbiani.

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Structural difficulties, failed attempts at levity and below-par action sequences would be bad enough, but sadly From Paris with Love also has a noticeably sexist undercurrent to its detriment, giving what would normally have simply been a bland meal a genuinely unpleasant aftertaste.

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We’re excited about our first blog, The Fourth Wall which will provide a less formal and more immediate forum for our film critics, Julia Rhodes and William Bibbiani, to discuss movies and the movie industry with our readers.

This article is filed under Movies, The Fourth Wall.

According to the script, God has lost faith in humanity, ostensibly because he grew “tired of all the BS.” Thus He orders the angels to exterminate mankind—just to switch it up a bit, since last time He went with a flood. The angel Michael (Paul Bettany) disagrees with God’s order and falls from heaven to save the human race. Michael chooses a tiny town called Paradise Falls (a clever but gauche touch of Dante), at the edge of the Mojave desert, in which to prove that humans are worth saving.

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The novel opens with a striking, abrupt proclamation: “My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.” After her murder, Susie watches from the Inbetween, a kind of non-Christian purgatory, as her family struggles with her death. Jackson, whose visionary filmmaking has earned him massive acclaim in the past, creates a heaven of brilliant, surreal landscapes in which Susie and her fellow dead frolic.

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