The Stop Button

What About Bob? is a special movie. It’s absolute dreck. Coming from screenwriter Tom Schulman, I suppose its lack of quality shouldn’t have been a surprise, but I think I was operating under the assumption producer Laura Ziskin wouldn’t let it get too bad. I mean, production wise, it’s got good people–Anne V. Coates is […]

The Big Fix is a fundamentally different detective movie. While there are some elements updating it to time period, a lot of it is still a detective investigating in LA, meeting all sorts of people all around town and so on. It’s still Raymond Chandler to some degree–with Dreyfuss playing his (marginally) goofy, but caring […]

This version–now called ‘The Director’s Cut’–originally came out as ‘The Collector’s Edition’ maybe ten years ago (maybe less). The most striking thing about this cut is Dreyfuss’s insanity. In this version, he’s totally nuts… Spielberg edits back in (from the original, excised from the Special Edition) a couple significant scenes. First, showing off Roberts Blossom–one […]

I don’t know where to start with Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The jokey open would be something about listing the defects and not having any, but then flipping it and not being able to list everything Spielberg does right because his successes are so difficult to work out, particularly in to an easy-to-read, […]

I think home video–tape and disc–has done a great disservice to John Badham and his legacy… as in, with this digital (or analog) evidence, one has easy access. Instead of coming across Stakeout at 11:30 P.M. on a Thursday night, pan and scanned, cut for content, and full of commercials, I can sit and watch […]

The first half of Jaws–before the boat, when it becomes a different film–might be the most perfectly made film ever. The second half isn’t less perfectly made, but it’s its own thing, not easily comparable to any other film; that first half deals in traditional filmic standards and does so with singular success. Verna Fields’s […]