Features
Friday, September 5 2008
What the World Needs Now: Society’s Desperate Need for Superheroes
Hollywood has finally discovered what comic book fans have known all along: superheroes serve as brightly-colored, two-dimensional extensions of ourselves.
Wednesday, May 2 2007
A Guide to All Things Spider-Man
Before you see Spider-Man 3, there's a few things you should know about the spider's lair. So go ahead, get tangled up in this extensive guide to Spider-Man's wonderful world-wide web.
Tuesday, May 1 2007
Monkey Business (Part 1: May)
Talk about frontloading your approach. Each week in this first full month of patented popcorn movies finds another famous franchise icon making a major blockbuster bow. Only truly disastrous results from these guaranteed crowd-pleasers will keep the coffers from clogging with cash.
Columns
Friday, April 26 2013
Books of the Dead: The Followers and Clones of 'The Evil Dead'
Initially a disaster of an experimental horror film, The Evil Dead went on to become an acclaimed and influential movie that launched careers and spawned sequels and copycats, not to mention a string of cash in faux-sequels. Who were these pretenders to the Deadite throne?
Reviews
Thursday, May 16 2013
'Crimewave' Is Just One Example of Sam Raimi's Pulp-Slapstick Sensibility
With its grotesque caricatures, genre-kidding plot turns, and frequent violations of physics, Crimewave is the kind of goof that repulses mainstream audiences and delights movie-crazy geeks.
Saturday, March 9 2013
'Oz the Great and Powerful': Looking Backwards in More Ways Than One
When two witches send Oscar off on a mission to steal the wand from yet another witch, a glowy-white one named Glinda, you know which witch is Oscar's best fit.
Friday, October 30 2009
Drag Me to Hell
Sam Raimi’s attempted return to the horror/comedy genre that was his stock in trade for the early part of his career is neither particularly horrific nor all that funny.
Friday, May 29 2009
Drag Me to Hell
Christine's monstrosity is hardly so daunting as that of the evil spirit stalking her, but it's of a piece with Drag Me to Hell's mostly vague cultural critique.
Friday, May 4 2007
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
The point of Spider-Man 3, underscored by all the posters, trailers, and buzz, is black Spidey.
Blogs
Tuesday, March 12 2013
Ranking the Greats 8: The 14 Films of Sam Raimi
Sam Raimi is best known for horror, but the Evil Dead director has done more than mere macabre. Here's our ranking of his 14 feature films.
Friday, March 8 2013
'Oz the Great and Powerful'? Pretty Much
Oz the Great and Powerful is not some watered down sell out. It's a real Sam Raimi film - and all that encompasses.
Tuesday, October 19 2010
Who Are the Next Horror Movie Maestros?
Perhaps it's too soon in the career arc to write off some of these wannabes as less than meaningful maestros. As we wait, however, the void continues to grow...and grow...
Wednesday, June 16 2010
From the Evil Dead to the Emerald City
The one thing that will make new millennium audiences line up for a return trip to Oz is some manner of new, improved outsized visual aesthetic. Does Raimi really bring that?
Saturday, June 5 2010
A Bunch of Blu 2
This time around, we look at Django, Dark Nature, Darkman, Flash Gordon, and Carlito's Way
News
Tuesday, May 26 2009
Horror beckons Sam Raimi home
"Sam Raimi works exclusively in the horror genre," Richard Skorman wrote in an appreciation of "Evil Dead II" in the 1989 reference guide Off Hollywood…
Monday, May 7 2007
Almighty Spidey spins out records
Spider-Man spent the weekend spinning a worldwide web of pure gold. "Spider-Man 3," bringing back Tobey Maguire as the red-suited comic hero Peter Parker and…
Tuesday, May 1 2007
Spider-Man returns for a bigger-than-ever third film
The problem with the present? All anyone wants to talk about is the future. At least that's the case with director Sam Raimi and the…
