Working on a film project required me to revisit a few, college-themed movies of yesteryear. Among them is the 1986 blockbuster hit Back to School, starring Rodney Dangerfield as Thornton Melon. I first watched Back to School in my freshman year of college, as part of a binge into teen-comedy classics from before my time.…
Throughout the month of October, The Open Man spotlights its favorite horror movies to set the mood for the season. Gore, jump-scares set to loud musical transitions, auxiliary characters present only to pad body counts: These are not the necessary ingredients for an effective horror film. Horror intended to frighten works best when the audience…
Q&A makes a triumphant return to The Open Man, and I really have to take my hat off to you readers. This week's round of questions are collectively the best in this column's history, starting off with a John Wick-inspired bang. I won't belabor the introduction, so let's get the requisite details out of the…
Moviegoers can't get enough of superheroes. The Marvel Cinematic Universe's "ambitious crossover" event, Infinity War, passed 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens for the highest-grossing opening of all-time. Six of the top 11 top domestic box-office earners of 2017 -- Wonder Woman, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man Homecoming, Thor Ragnarok, Justice League and Logan -- were superhero movies. This isn't a…
Horror as a genre has long relied on singular, lead characters to tell stories. From the moment F.W. Murnau filmed a pointy-eared, fanged Max Schreck as Count Orlock in 1922's Nosferatu, horror's focal characters have almost exclusively been the very monsters audiences are meant to fear. Dracula. Wolf-Man. Michael Myers. Jason Voorhees. Freddy Krueger. Their…
Welcome to the first Friday of the academic calendar year with no college football nor basketball to look forward to. Action does not return to the gridiron for nearly five grueling months. This week marks the single longest stretch sans college basketball of the entire trip around the sun. But all is not lost, readers…
Perhaps you have seen advertisements for YouTube's exclusive series Cobra Kai, a follow-up to the 1984 film Karate Kid. Now, I have railed previously in this space against Hollywood's creatively empty reliance on reboots and adaptations, but I will admit Cobra Kai piqued my interest. Comedic spins on old properties produced hilarious results with 2004's…
Kyrie Irving's alter ego, Uncle Drew, hits the big screen this June. The film arrives in theaters as summer blockbuster season is in full swing, suggesting Lions Gate has faith in the big-screen debut for the Celtics guard. The June 29 premier is no accident, either. The NBA Finals will have just ended, and you…
CBS plans to reboot Murphy Brown, a popular television series that began its initial run 30 years ago and ended 20 years ago. This decision follows NBC relaunching Will & Grace, Netflix picking up the misadventures of the Tanners on Fuller House, the Disney Channel introducing Girl Meets World and ABC planning a Roseanne reboot…
If you’re like me, one of the things you appreciate the most about the holiday season is incessantly watching Christmas movies. From the moment the dishes are cleared on Thanksgiving night through Christmas Eve, it’s All Christmas Everything up in here, as far as I’m concerned. From the old school, stop-motion classics such as “Jack…
If you’re like me, one of the things you appreciate the most about the holiday season is incessantly watching Christmas movies. From the moment the dishes are cleared on Thanksgiving night through Christmas Eve, it’s All Christmas Everything up in here, as far as I’m concerned. From the old school, stop-motion classics such as “Jack…
If you’re like me, one of the things you appreciate the most about the holiday season is incessantly watching Christmas movies. From the moment the dishes are cleared on Thanksgiving night through Christmas Eve, it’s All Christmas Everything up in here, as far as I’m concerned. From the old school, stop-motion classics such as “Jack…
If you’re like me, one of the things you appreciate the most about the holiday season is incessantly watching Christmas movies. From the moment the dishes are cleared on Thanksgiving night through Christmas Eve, it’s All Christmas Everything up in here, as far as I’m concerned. From the old school, stop-motion classics such as “Jack…
Christmas cinema is an exercise in contrasts. The good is often excellent, with classics such as A Christmas Story, It's A Wonderful Life and Christmas Vacation. But the bad? Whew, buddy, is the bad ever bad. Were I ever to compile a definitive list of the worst films ever -- and that might be a…
Social unrest provided a cornerstone in the various boom periods for horror cinema. For example, the genre's Golden Age in the first half of the 1930s coincided with the worsening of the Great Depression. Hollywood's Pre-Code era and the genuine anxiety of the time produced classics like Freaks, and the various Universal Studios monster franchises,…
