Favorite films

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1995

★★★½ Watched 18 Jul 1995

Batman Forever is the third installment in the original Warner Bros. Batman film series, following Batman in 1989 and Batman Returns in 1992, both of which were directed by Tim Burton. However, Burton left the Batman franchise during the development of the third film because Warner Bros. wanted to go in a lighter, more commercial, and family-friendly direction, which clashed with Burton’s increasingly dark, gothic depiction of Gotham City. The studio saw diminishing returns on the edgier tone and opted…

1995

★★★ Watched 30 Jun 1995

Following the success of Jurassic Park in 1993, screenplays adapted from the action/adventure novels of Michael Crichton were suddenly hot commodities; one such screenplay was Congo, which was adapted by John Patrick Shanley from the 1980 novel of the same name, and which had been kicking around Hollywood for more than a decade. The resulting film was directed by Frank Marshall and stars Dylan Walsh as Dr. Peter Elliot, a primatologist who is traveling to the Congo to return a…

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1992

★★★★ Added

When I first started writing about film music, in the summer of 1997, I tried to write a review of Alien 3. I had seen the film previously, and liked it a great deal, and I being especially impressed with the music in the finale, so I went out and bought Elliot Goldenthal’s soundtrack CD. This was my first experience of his music outside of film context, and my film music knowledge at that point barely extended beyond the…

2021

★★★★ Watched 19 Oct 2021

The Last Duel is a historical epic drama for the Me Too generation, a truly harrowing look at the powerlessness, lack of agency, and mis-treatment of women throughout time, and how comparatively little has changed over the course of the past several centuries in of how sexual assault is viewed differently by men and women. The film is directed by Ridley Scott and is based on the 2004 book of the same name by Eric Jager; ostensibly it looks…

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