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Raaz is pretty much an original spook story, told with terrific elan and a high-velocity suspense that tears across the screen with a bloodcurdling scream. Vikram Bhatt is no stranger to thrillers. His very first film, Fareb, was a thriller of shocks.

Bhatt’s previous film (inspired by What Lies Beneath) was a far less in-your-face suspense thriller than Raaz. Everything this time around is more sensuous, tactile, thrilling, throbbing with terror and anxiety. Bhatt builds a field of foreboding through age-old gimmicks associated with the horror genre. Doors creak and open ominously, screams rent the air with piercing suddenness, and a fog envelopes the studiously silent landscape in Ooty to convey the terror within.

Cinematographer Pravin (the director’s father) captures the inner and outer landscape in shades of ebony evil. As is the tradition in horror-suspense films, most of Raaz is shot in the dark. Pravin Bhatt makes...

March 17, 1951 was a great day in history, because that’s the day Kurt Vogel Russell entered the world. And while he would go on to become one of the biggest icons of the eighties and nineties, many folks don’t know that Russell started as a child star for The Walt Disney Company, even acting opposite his future life partner Goldie Hawn in The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968) – although they wouldn’t get together until Russell ended up in another movie starring Goldie Hawn, Swing Shift (1984). From the sixties into the seventies, he starred in Disney flicks like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), but as the studio’s movies started to flop and Russell got older, a change of pace was needed. Arguably, Russell’s career took off when he began working with director John Carpenter, with the first movie being 1979’s TV movie Elvis, but what...

Image via the official Ghost in the Shell website The son of voice actor Atsuko Tanaka announced on his X (formerly Twitter) account that his mother passed at the age of 61 on August 20, with Mausu Promotion also announcing the news on the same day. Tanaka’s son, fellow voice actor Hikaru Tanaka, noted that she did not want to reveal the name of the disease but revealed she had been battling the condition for the past year. Atsuko Tanaka is best known as the voice of Motoko Kusanagi in the Ghost in the Shell franchise, Bayonetta in the Bayonetta games, Lisa Lisa in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure , Hanami in Jujutsu Kaisen , Konan in Naruto and many more. Here is the message from Hikaru Tanaka along with a translation: To all of you who have always been a part of our lives, On August 20, 2024, my mother Atsuko Tanaka, a voice actor, passed away.

With Now Showing, your Halloweenies gather each month for a review on something new and something old in horror. This month, co-hosts Michael Roffman, Justin Gerber, and Dan Caffrey discuss M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, Oddity, and The Devil’s Bath before revisiting Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, and Unlawful Entry.

Stream the episode below or subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, RadioPublic, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS. New to the Halloweenies? Catch up with the gang by revisiting their essential episodes on past franchises such as Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Scream, The Evil Dead, and Chucky. This year? Alien.

You can also become a member of their Patreon, The Rewind, for even more hilariously irreverent commentaries and one-off deep dives on your favorite rentals. Each month promises something new and unexpected from the wildest corners of the genre.

When Kurt Russell shed his Disney child star image once and for all as the leathery, laconic renegade Snake Plissken in John Carpenter's dystopian action hit "Escape from New York," he seemed poised for a long career as a handsome, rough-and-tumble leading man, the John Wayne-Steve McQueen hybrid America needed now that both had hit the soil. Russell, however, had other plans.

For starters, Russell didn't dig the laconic shtick. After a tonally similar performance as the perpetually cheesed-off R.J. MacReady in Carpenter's "The Thing," the actor sought to send up his tough-guy persona in goofball action flicks like "Big Trouble in Little China" and "Tango & Cash." He also gleefully made a fool of himself in broad comedies (memorably/infamously in "Overboard" and "Captain Ron"), while playing in-over-their-heads everymen in thrillers like "The Mean Season" and "Unlawful Entry." He could still do the gruff act when...

Intro: It’s a story we’ve all heard before. A group of friends stray off the beaten path and end up having to fight for their lives. This has served as the set-up for many classic horror films and thrillers. Back in the early ‘90s, director Stephen Hopkins used it as the set-up for an action movie that has an awesome cast. Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jeremy Piven, and Stephen Dorff play the friends fighting to survive. Denis Leary is the leader of the criminal gang out for their blood. Unfortunately, not a lot of people went to see the movie when it was released… but they did make the soundtrack a hit. The movie is called Judgment Night, and it’s time for it to be Revisited.

Set-up: Judgment Night started out as a spec script written by Kevin Jarre, whose other credits include Rambo: First Blood Part 2,...

Ray Liotta's final movie, Cocaine Bear, was released after his death, showcasing his talent in a darkly comedic role. Directed by Elizabeth Banks, the film highlights Liotta's ability to blend charm with a menacing undertone, cementing his versatile acting skills. Despite a graphic death scene originally planned, director Banks revised it to honor Liotta's legacy and maintain the dignity of his final performance.

Cocaine Bear was Ray Liotta's last movie, but it was released nine months after his death. Liotta was a formidable presence in Hollywood, revered for his intense and compelling performances across a broad spectrum of films. Born on December 18, 1954, Liotta's acting career was marked by a series of iconic roles showcasing his ability to infuse complex characters with a raw, palpable energy. His portrayal of Henry Hill in the Goodfellas cast is perhaps his most celebrated role, epitomizing his skill at navigating the intricate layers of...

The 1990s are regularly regarded as the era of the high-concept thriller. In the wake of eighties smashes like Jagged Edge and Fatal Attraction, audiences tended to flock to these kinds of movies, although it’s worth noting they quickly spun off into two different mini-genres. There was the erotic thriller genre, whose queen was definitely Sharon Stone, with movies like Basic Instinct and Sliver, but there was also the so-called yuppie thriller.

These movies often centred around upwardly mobile middle-class couples who wind up in the crosshairs of a maniac who wants to dismantle their lives. Fatal Attraction was arguably the first of these. Still, many more would follow, including Pacific Heights, which featured Michael Keaton in a memorably evil role, Bad Influence (with Rob Lowe), Internal Affairs (which revitalized Richard Gere’s career), Malice, and the great Single White Female. But, of the genre, one of the most effective was 1992’s Unlawful Entry,...

The nineties were the golden age of the thriller. Every other week, a star-driven thriller seemed to open in theaters, to the point that everyone took them for granted after a little while, and the genre dried up. Many of the best examples of the genre, like Basic Instinct, Single White Female, Jennifer 8, and others, hold up quite well in retrospect. One of my favourites has always been Jonathan Kaplan’s Unlawful Entry, which I did a Best Movie You Never Saw video about not long ago.

In it, Kurt Russell and Madeleine Stowe play a likeable yuppie couple rocked by a home invasion. A friendly cop, played by the late, great Ray Liotta, helps them out, and soon, he becomes a trusted friend and part of their lives. However, in classic Liotta fashion, he turns out to be a raving psychopath with designs on Stowe, leading to the white-collar...

April Ferry, the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning costume designer known for her work on Big Trouble in Little China, Maverick, Rome and Game of Thrones, died Thursday, the Costume Designers Guild announced. She was 91.

Ferry, who graduated to costume designer on Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill (1983), collaborated with John Hughes on Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987), She’s Having a Baby (1988) and Flubber (1997) and with Jonathan Mostow on U-571 (2000), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) and Surrogates (2009).

She received her Academy Award nom for Richard Donner’s reimagining of Maverick (1994) — she lost out to Lizzy Gardiner and Tim Chappel of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert on Oscar night — and won her Emmy in 2006 for HBO’s Rome.

Her résumé also included Made in Heaven (1987), Child’s Play (1988), The Babe (1992), Donner’s Radio Flyer (1992), Unlawful Entry (1992), Free Willy (1993), Beethoven’s 2nd (1993), Little Giants (1994), Donnie Darko (2001), Elysium (2013), RoboCop (2014) and Jurassic World (2015).

In 2014, she...

Exclusive: Revenge actress Madeleine Stowe and Daredevil‘s Stephen Rider have joined Andy and Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs’ Max Original series, Welcome to Derry (working title), which is a prequel to New Line’s hit Stephen King film franchise, It.

Stowe will have a recurring guest role while Rider is a series regular. Their parts are being kept under wraps in the series which expands on King’s It universe, particularly that laid out in Andy Muschietti’s It movies. He’ll direct several episodes in the series including the first.

The duo join previously announced cast members Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, and James Remar.

Related: 2023 HBO Max Series & Pilot Orders

Rider’s credits also include the series Instinct, Marvel’s Luke Cage (in which he reprised his Daredevil role of Blake Tower), as well as the movies The Great Debaters and The Butler. He’s repped...

Starring alongside Jerry Seinfeld, Ray Liotta played a small but crucial role in the oft-memed animated cult classic Bee Movie. Liotta is a legend of the silver screen, who first rose to prominence with his role in Something Wild and went on to play such iconic characters as Henry Hill in Goodfellas and Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams. Liotta appeared in a wide range of projects, from bleak, brutal, ultraviolent thrillers, like Killing Them Softly, to lighthearted family-friendly comedies like, Muppets Most Wanted. Sadly, Liotta passed away in 2022 while filming Dangerous Waters, but he left behind a huge fan base and an impressive body of work.

In particular, Liotta has become known for animation due to his very rich, distinctive voice. In his review of Marriage Story, The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw wrote, “What a thrill to hear [Liotta’s] syrupy-gravelly voice again.” Liotta also played Moe’s father, Morty Szyslak,...

Fans of the Halloween franchise received some sad news today, as it has been confirmed that stuntman George P. Wilbur – who played horror icon Michael Myers in both Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), the sixth entry in the series – has passed away at the age of 81.

Wilbur’s fellow Michael Myers performer Chris Durand, who played the character in 1998’s Halloween H20, broke the news of his passing on Facebook earlier today: “George P. Wilbur passed away last night. George, you were a class act and well loved. You will be missed. May you Rest in Peace.” Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers screenwriter Daniel Farrands reacted to the news by saying, “Very sad to hear of George’s passing. He was such a kind soul and a beloved member of the Halloween family.“

Born on March 6, 1941 in Connecticut, Wilbur served...

Director / Producer / Showrunner Greg Yaitanes discusses a few of his favorite movies with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Innerspace (1987) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, The Atomo-Vision Of Joe Dante At The American Cinematheque

The Ipcress File (1965) – Howard Rodman’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

On The Border (1998)

Hard Justice (1995)

Rorschach (1993)

Hard Target (1993)

Hard Boiled (1992)

Risky Business (1983)

Assault Platoon (1990)

Forrest Gump (1994)

Star Wars (1977)

All That Jazz (1979) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Star 80 (1983)

Lenny (1974) – Robert Weide’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

The Pope Of Greenwich Village (1984)

Southern Comfort (1981)

The Trial (1962) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary

How To Train Your Dragon (2010)

Babylon (2022)

Hitman’s Run (1999)

Birdy (1984)

The Last Temptation Of Christ (1988)

The Paper House (1986)

A History Of Violence (2005)

The Passion Of The Christ (2004)

Hail Mary (1985)

The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)

Double Tap (1997)

Conspiracy Theory (1997)

Die Hard (1988)

Heat (1995)

Manhunter (1986) – Josh Olson’s...

Gene Levy, former V.P. of Fox Pictures and producer of over 40 films and television series, died on Oct. 15 in Las Vegas. He was 84.

Levy produced an array of films spanning over five decades, including “The Bachelor,” “Waterworld,” “Unlawful Entry,” “Streets of Fire,” “Brewster’s Millions,” “Blood Voyage,” “Hysterical,” “Judgement Night” and “Trojan War.” He also worked as the production manager on several of these films, along with “Copycat,” “48 Hrs.,” “Thief,” “Southern Comfort” and “The Long Riders.”

In 1988, he was appointed V.P. of feature production at 20th Century Fox, and would later serve as V.P. of feature production at Largo Entertainment from 1990 to 1993.

Levy began his career in accounting, earning his degree while serving in the U.S. Army Reserves until his discharge in 1962. After being introduced to writer-producer Sterling Silliphant, he worked as an accountant for the final season of the New York-based series “Naked City,” followed by another Silliphant television production,...

Click here to read the full article.

Roger E. Mosley, who portrayed Theodore “T.C.” Calvin, the helicopter pilot and buddy of Tom Selleck’s character on all eight seasons of the original Magnum, P.I., died Sunday. He was 83.

Mosley died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of injuries incurred in a car accident in nearby Lynwood three days earlier, his daughter, Ch-a, told The Hollywood Reporter.

On the big screen, Mosley was at his most memorable as blues and folk singer Huddie Ledbetter (“The Midnight Special”) in the period piece Leadbelly (1976), directed by Gordon Parks. In his review, Roger Ebert wrote that Mosley played the part “with great strength” and called the film “one of the best biographies of a musician I’ve ever seen.”

Mosley also was a standout in blaxploitation films, playing the angry brother of the fresh-out-of-prison Goldie (Max Julien) in the classic The Mack...

Ray Liotta, who died Thursday at 67, was a great actor who was second to none when it came to playing hoodlums, scoundrels, rotters, psychopaths, and cool jerks. To put it that way sounds reductive, of course, since that was far from the only thing he could do. Just think of his beloved performance in “Field of Dreams,” where he played Shoeless Joe Jackson as the impish ghost of baseball past. But when he would pop up in a movie like “Killing Them Softly” or “Cop Land” or “Unlawful Entry” or “Blow” or the recent “No Sudden Move” and play one of his hellbent strong-arm types, you could always feel the charge he brought to it. Liotta laced the threat of violence with a tingle of intelligence, his mind working to suss out the double-crossing signifiers of any criminal situation. And no one could match the delight he took in making straight characters squirm.

Ray Liotta, ‘Goodfellas’ star, is dead at 67. Rest in Peace good friend. Raymond Allen Liotta was an American actor and producer. His best-known roles include Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams (1989), Henry Hill in Goodfellas (1990), and Tommy Vercetti in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002). His other roles included Ray Sinclair in Something Wild (1986), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, as well as starring in Unlawful Entry (1992), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Killing Them Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), and Marriage Story (2019), as well as the drama series Shades of Blue (2016–2018).

The post Ray Liotta: Rest in Peace good friend. first appeared on HollywoodNews.com.

He specialized in tough guys — cops, crooks, convicts, killers, and guys who immediately gave you the impression they’d seen and/or started their share of shit. But Ray Liotta was an actor with soul even when he played a legion of broken men who’d lost theirs, and the star — who passed away today at the age of 67 — had a range that went far beyond mobsters, madmen and maniacs. Name someone else who could easily pull off the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson, the gangster-movie version of Candide, a...

Ray Liotta’s career took off like a rocket shot with Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989) and Goodfellas (1990) accounting for three of his first five films. He spent the next 35 years making movies with some of Hollywood’s biggest directors and stars.

On May 26, 2022, died in his sleep while filming Dangerous Waters in the Dominican Republic.

While probably still best know for his portrayal of Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams and Henry Hill in Goodfellas, Liotta had many other memorable roles in films such as Unlawful Entry (1992), Cop Land with Sylvester Stallone in 1997, Hannibal (2001), Blow opposite Johnny Depp in 2001. John Q directed by John Cassavetes in 2002, Identity (2003), Killing Them Softly with Brad Pitt in 2012, The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story in 2019, The Many Saints of Newark (2021) and Cocaine Bear (2023).

Liotta also had success on the small screen, He was posthumously nominated this year for...

Ray Liotta, the intense actor from New Jersey best known for his turn as the hustler turned mob rat Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas, has died. He was 67.

Publicist Jennifer Allen told The Hollywood Reporter that the actor died Wednesday night or early Thursday in his sleep in his hotel room while in the Dominican Republic making the movie Dangerous Waters. His fiancée, Jacy Nittolo, was with him. He had begun work on the film about a week ago.

The boyish, blue-eyed Liotta also was memorable as Ray Sinclair, the violent ex-convict husband of Melanie Griffith’s character, in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild (1986); as the disgraced Chicago White Sox baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson in the Kevin Costner starrer Field of Dreams (1989); and as the corrupt cop Matt Wozniak on the 2016-18 NBC cop drama Shades of Blue, opposite Jennifer Lopez.

“Ray was the epitome of a...

A shocker. Ray Liotta, the terrific actor whose career breakout came in the 1990 Martin Scorsese crime classic Goodfellas after co-starring in Field of Dreams, has died. He was 67.

Deadline hears that Liotta died in his sleep in the Dominican Republic, where he was shooting the film Dangerous Waters. We will have more details when they become available.

Liotta leaves behind a daughter, Karsen. He was engaged to be married to Jacy Nittolo.

Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery

Liotta was on a big resurgence. Recent turns included The Many Saints of Newark, Marriage Story — for which he shared a 2020 ensemble Indie Spirit Award — and Steven Soderbergh’s No Sudden Move. He finished the Elizabeth Banks-directed Cocaine Bear and was due to star in the Working Title film The Substance opposite Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley.

He also recently was set to executive produce the A&e docuseries Five Families,...

Charles Gordon, who produced such hit films as Field of Dreams, Waterworld, and October Sky, has died of cancer in Los Angeles at Cedars-Sinai surrounded by family. He was 73.

Gordon, along with brother Lawrence Gordon, was raised in Belzoni, Mississippi.

Lawrence Gordon confirmed his brother’s passing in a phone conversation with Deadline. “He was a wonderful man, a great father a great husband and a great human being,” Gordon said. “He was my closest friend, and we collaborated on films that included Field Of Dreams and Die Hard in particular. He also produced without me October Sky, which was just a wonderful movie. Though he was 11 years younger than me, my baby brother, in real life he was more like a big brother, and I never made an important family decision without his input.”

The brothers worked alongside each other for numerous films. Charles Gordon’s producing credits include Field of Dreams,...

Lawrence G. Paull, a production designer and art director whose work on the science fiction classic Blade Runner earned him an Oscar nomination and won a BAFTA Award, died Sunday in La Jolla, Calif. He was 81. No cause of death was given.

Paull had a long history in Hollywood, designing for such films as Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future (1985) and Romancing the Stone (1984) and Ron Underwood’s City Slickers (1991).

Blade Runner was a groundbreaking visual effort, winning Paull an Academy Award nomination for production design in 1982. The Oscar went to the creators of Gandhi, but Paull later won a BAFTA together with futurist Syd Mead and VFX inventor Douglas Trumbull. Three years later, Paull again was nominated for a BAFTA for his work on Back to the Future.

Born in Chicago in 1938, Paull graduated from the University of Arizona. He soon discovered that architecture was too conservative for him,...

In the grand tradition of psychological thrillers from yesteryear (especially the 1990s)—you know, the ones where we watch as some psychotic manipulator takes advantage of well-meaning folks who are afraid of confrontation—comes Deon Taylor’s The Intruder, an endlessly entertaining and enthralling cautionary tale about the dangers of home ownership.

The Intruder is centered around Scott and Annie Russell (played by Michael Ealy and Meagan Good), a young and successful couple who are tired of the hustle and bustle of living in downtown San Francisco and decide that they’re in need of a change of scenery. They find the home of their dreams out in Napa Valley, as widower Charlie Peck (Dennis Quaid) has decided to sell his family estate, Foxglove, and start a new life out in Florida. The Russells eagerly make an offer on the house, and as they begin to settle in to their...

Michael Keaton, who celebrates his 66th birthday on September 5, got his start as a production assistant for a fellow Pittsburgh native, PBS kid-show host Fred Rogers. His film career took off in the 1980s in a series of era-defining popular comedies such as “Mr. Mom” before hitting the jackpot when Tim Burton recruited him as his Caped Crusader in 1989’s“Batman.” Keaton would lose some of his fast-talker mojo when he got mired in family fluff such as “Herbie: Fully Loaded,” “Jack Frost” and “First Daughter.”

But in the past decade or so, he has become quite the esteemed actor. Keaton soared to Academy-Award-nominated anxiety-riddled heights in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Birdman” in 2014. He also stood out as the editor in charge of the Pulitzer-winning journalism team that exposed the Catholic Church’s child sex-abuse scandal in 2015’s Best Picture Oscar victor, “Spotlight.” This unique performer continues to be in demand.

Ray Liotta is known for playing many edgy, disgruntled characters — some may even say he’s the go-to guy for the “bad guy.” But during “A Conversation with Ray Liotta” at the Atx Television Festival, he was anything but a villain. In fact, he had the audience laughing with his no-frills Jersey deadpan delivery.

“You see, I’m funny,” he insisted. “I’m not what I play!”

Everyone remembers Liotta from his many roles in film — specifically Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. He’s also known for his roles in Something Wild, Field of Dreams, Unlawful Entry, and Operation Dumbo Drop — a movie he said Don Rickles loved.

His list of film credits may be unbelievably long, but he has just as many television credits to his name. He was on the soap opera Another World (a role he is proud of) as well as a role in the short-lived adaptation...

A man has been arrested after he jumped the White House fence and attempted to run up to the property dressed as the Pokemon Pikachu. Court documents says 36-year-old Curtis Combs of Kentucky was arrested without incident after jumping the fence in a Pikachu costume after repeated warnings by White House Secret Service to stop.

New: Curtis Combs of Kentucky charged w/ Unlawful Entry for breaching White House security, seeking to jump fence & post it to Youtube pic.twitter.com/jjCgcbVJjt

— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) October 18, 2017

As for why Combs would do something that can get you shot and killed, Combs was hoping he could record the stunt and become famous on YouTube. His channel, which is listed in the documents as Wildaf looks as though it has been hidden from the site.

Weirdly enough, this is not the first time something exactly like this has happened. Back in 2014 a guy...

Author: Cai Ross

The summer movie season of 1992 opened under a cloud; a dark cloud from the still-smouldering buildings that had burned to the ground during the La riots in April. Racial tension after the disastrous acquittal of Rodney King’s uniformed attackers had reached an all-time high and Hollywood appealed for calm.

Thus, in a touchingly bold demonstration of selfless generosity, Walter Hill’s unremarkable urban thriller, The Looters, was hastily withdrawn and held back until Christmas, re-christened Trespass (memorably starring two Bills – Paxton and Sadler – and a pair of Ices – T and Cube). Elsewhere, it was business as usual.

The Rodney King affair was briefly alluded to in Lethal Weapon 3, the second-biggest hit of the summer and one of only a handful of ‘sure things’ on the menu. Though there were mutterings about the dominance of sequels in the summer movie season, there were weird things afoot in most of the other returnees. Aside from Lethal Weapon 3 – which was essentially a watered down Lethal Weapon 2 with too much added Joe Pesci – the rest of the sequels veered off into strange tangents, with varying results.

Alien 3, for example strayed dangerously far from the template set down by the first two classics. Bravely, it has to be said, David Fincher tried to create a quasi-religious epic, following Scott’s horror movie and Cameron’s war film. Latterly, Fincher’s frustrations and behind-the-scenes interferences became legendary, but audiences didn’t click with his compromised vision and it became the first in a long line of Alien movies to fall a bit flat.

Another major sequel, Honey, I Blew Up The Baby was in fact the complete opposite of 1989’s Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, culminating in the spectacle of a 99 foot toddler stomping through Las Vegas. It was directed without enthusiasm by Grease director Randal Kleiser, reminding audiences once again why no one remembers who directed Grease.

It wasn’t just sequels that dared to be different. One of the strangest mainstream offerings of the year was Robert Zemeckis’s black comedy, Death Becomes Her, which might have been a delicious satire on America’s vain obsession with cosmetic surgery if only Bruce Willis had stopped shouting at everyone like he was trying to prevent a plane crash.

Back in the ‘90s, much more so than today, comedies were a vital part of the summer success story – an inexpensive sop for the grown-ups while their teenage kids watched things explode in Screen 7. There were high hopes for Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn’s Housesitter, which was only a medium-sized hit, despite the bit where Steve Martin sings ‘Tura Lura Lura’ to his dad, and the other bit when his falls over his couch.

Boomerang was a bigger hit and restored some credibility to Eddie Murphy’s career after the crippling one-two punches of Harlem Nights and Another 48 Hours. It was also responsible for one of the great ironic ‘First Dance At a Wedding’ songs, Boys II Men’s The End of The Road.

Nicolas Cage embarked on a three year long career as a romantic comedy star with the rather wonderful Honeymoon in Vegas, famed for its skydiving Elvis finale. Tom Hanks and his Big director Penny Marshall reteamed to great success with wartime baseball comedy A League of Their Own, which also saw Geena Davis giving a star performance and Madonna giving a bearable one. “There’s no crying in baseball!!!” was probably the most quoted line of the summer.

As with City Slickers in 1991, comedy provided the biggest sleeper hit of the summer: Sister Act, with Whoopi Goldberg excelling as a murder witness hiding out in a convent. As with City Slickers, an unwise sequel was hastily made and hastily forgotten. The original though, was the sixth biggest film of the year and is still going strong as a west-end show to this day.

It wasn’t just the many and varied comic tastes of adults that were appeased; semi-literate young people were also provided for by Encino Man (or California Man as we knew it, since we don’t know where Encino is. It’s in California). Noted for Brendan Fraser’s first stab at the big time, this grungy caveman caper will be of interest to young contemporary archeologists keen to investigate who or what Pauly Shore was.

Teenagers were also palmed off with a silly-sounding comedy called Buffy The Vampire Slayer, written by first-time screenwriter Joss Whedon. Starring Kristy Swanson as the eponymous heroine, but marketed as a vehicle for Beverly Hills 90210 heart-throb Luke Perry, the producers had hoped for a chunk of the Bill & Ted audience that Encino Man hadn’t swallowed up. Sadly, they had to make do with a long-running spin-off television show regularly cited as one of the greatest ever made. Gnarly.

The stalking killer thriller phenomenon that started with The Silence of The Lambs and Cape Fear echoed into 1992 with solid hits like Unlawful Entry and Single White Female. Even Patriot Games – a sort-of sequel to The Hunt For Red October with Harrison Ford rebooting Alec Baldwin’s Jack Ryan – for all its CIA espionage and partial understanding of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, was basically a slasher movie, with Sean Bean doing to Harrison Ford what Robert De Niro had done to Nick Nolte the year before. (Sean Bean dies, obviously).

Crimes against the Emerald Isle weren’t restricted to the gratuitous amounts of Clannad in Patriot Games. Tom Cruise’s Irish accent in Ron Howard’s Far and Away was the benchmark for all bad Irish accents until Brad Pitt graciously took the relay baton in The Devil’s Own. The film, shot in glorious 70mm was the biggest risk of the summer and proved to be the dampest squib, considering the star power of Cruise and (then-wife) Nicole Kidman. Despite looking ravishing, the script had all the depth of a bottle-cap. It desperately wanted to be a timeless classic in the David Lean tradition but held up against Unforgiven, which was released in August, Far & Away was shown up as the glorified Cbbc TV special it was.

Unforgiven came out of nowhere. Clint Eastwood’s previous movie, The Rookie, was somehow even worse than 1989’s Pink Cadillac. However, he’d been sitting on David Webb Peoples’ script for years until he was finally old enough to play William Munny. An extraordinary, mature and masterful critique of Western mythology, Unforgiven was hailed as Eastwood’s best work from the get-go, took the summer’s number five spot and would later win a handful of Oscars, including Pest Picture.

So who was the box office champion of Summer ’92? Well, that question was never in any doubt. Tim Burton’s Batman was the cultural phenomenon of 1989, redefining the parameters of box office limitations and merchandise licensing in a way not seen since Star Wars. Speculation as to who Batman would fight next and who would play him/her began immediately. Dustin Hoffman was touted to play The Penguin and Annette Bening was actually cast as Catwoman, before pregnancy forced her to drop out.

On the 19th of June, all was revealed when Batman Returns opened to a spectacular $45m weekend, $5m more than the original. Michael Keaton returned as The Caped Crusader (having split up with the creditably tight-lipped Vicki Vale), while not one but three villains put up their dukes. Danny DeVito played the Penguin as a deformed, subterranean leader of a gang of circus act drop-outs. Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman (perhaps her signature role) was transformed from a clumsy secretary into a vengeful whip-wielding dominatrix. Christopher Walken borrowed ‘Doc’ Emmett Brown’s hair to play new villain, Max Shreck.

Despite the enormous opening weekend, things took a downward turn almost immediately. Audiences expecting more of the same were treated to a dark, nose-bitingly violent combination of German Expressionism, kinky S&M and oversized rubber ducks. The box office the following week dropped by 40%, and there was further controversy when McDonalds had to deal with the ire of horrified parents across America, ‘tricked’ by their Batman Returns Happy Meals into taking their kids to watch Burton’s deranged fairy tale, pussy jokes et al.

The backlash (against what is now considered a unique high-water mark in the superhero genre), meant that Batman Returns wound up making $100m less than its predecessor and it placed third for the year, behind Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, a film so determined to give its audience a familiar experience that it simply changed the first film’s screen directions from Int. Kevin’S House – Night to Ext. New York – Night and reshot the entire script. (The box office crown for the year was taken eventually by Disney’s Aladdin.)

Warner Bros. took evasive action, hiring Joel Schumacher to sweeten the mix, which would help to restore Batman’s fortunes in 1995, before everything, literally absolutely everything went wrong in 1997 and the world had to wait for Christopher Nolan to finish attending Ucl, become a director and save the Dark Knight from the resultant ignominy.

Hollywood was given a crash course in the perils of straying too far from a winning formula in the summer of ’92. Sadly, for a while at least, it learned its lesson.

The post Tamed Aliens, Harmonic Nuns and a Leather Catsuit: Strange Tales from 1992’s Summer of Cinema appeared first on HeyUGuys.

Ray Liotta plays shady cop Matt Wozniak alongside Jennifer Lopez on NBC’s Shades of Blue, but he wants to also play an action hero. Ray Liotta is no stranger...

Author: Matt Rodgers

Home invasion movies have been around since the days when Kurt Russell and Ray Liotta headlined A-list fare (Unlawful Entry). David Fincher has even played around in the sub-genre with the visual trickery of Panic Room, and most recently we had You’re Next, which presented itself as homage but descended into Scooby Doo cliché.

Arguably the biggest sleeper hit of 2016, with $150m worldwide from a budget of just under $10M, Fede The Evil Dead Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe is also the most effective domestic terror film since the original Straw Dogs. Why, you might ask? Step inside and we’ll show you……

The Kids are Alright

Time and time again, films fail to make you care for the fate of the characters. A recent point in case was Blair Witch. Released during the same theatrical window as Don’t Breathe, it failed on a commercial...

Michael Ealy is a ‘good creep’ in this familiar tale of the sexy stranger who turns out to have a screw loose

The “sexy stranger who turns out to be a psychotic stalker” narrative is a well-rehearsed genre staple, from Ray Liotta’s creepy cop in 1992’s Unlawful Entry to Ryan Guzman’s creepy neighbour in this year’s The Boy Next Door. This latest retelling of a familiar tale sticks to the rule book as it serves up Michael Ealy’s creepy It specialist (“my job is to make people feel safe”) who first woos and then terrorises Sanaa Lathan’s recently single career woman. Ealy gives good creep, seeing off unwelcome barflies, sucking up to Mom and Dad (Charles S Dutton lending a touch of class) and exuding oleaginous untrustworthiness from his hairstyle to his teeth. The B-movie riffs are efficiently executed, but the biggest mystery is why...

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As news emerges of a Memento remake, Ryan praises Christopher Nolan's original, and explains why it'll be a difficult story to retell.

What a difference 15 years can make. At the turn of the millennium, Christopher Nolan had just shot his second feature, Memento, and was struggling to find a studio willing to distribute it in America. It was too confusing, they said. I mean, really: who wants to watch a movie told backwards?

Lots of people as it turned out. Once it finally found a distributor, Memento not only far exceeded its tiny $5m investment in its small-scale theatrical run, but also proved to be the making of Nolan's career. It marked him out as an individual filmmaker in full control of his craft, and over the next decade, he proceeded to make a string of hits: Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception.

In the early 90s, various psycho thrillers were churned out by studios following the success of Fatal Attraction and The Silence Of The Lambs. These lead the way for dozens of simliar fare, including the likes of Cape Fear, the underrated Pacific Heights, Misery, Raising Cain, Single White Female, Unlawful Entry and, memorably, Basic Instinct.

The post The Gift Review appeared first on HeyUGuys.

The dog days soon will be upon us, and with them the dregs of American cinema dumped unceremoniously into the local multiplex. But you could do a lot worse than The Gift, a creepy, crafty throwback to early ’90s stalker thrillers like Pacific Heights, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Single White Female and Unlawful Entry. Taken on its own undemanding terms and considered within its not very original framework, Joel Edgerton’s feature-length directorial debut is a pleasant — or pleasantly unpleasant — surprise, hitting its genre marks in brisk, unfussy fashion and raising a few hairs on the

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The 1990s: a time when Sleepwalkers, Burt Reynolds, No Escape, Chevy Chase and F/X/2 could top the Us box office...

By the 1990s, studios were waking up to movie marketing, and the era of the blockbuster. Tim Burton's Batman, released in summer 1989, had introduced the idea of a big opening weekend, and modern movies now target their promotional work to get just that. As such, it's harder and harder for smaller films to snare the top slot at the Us box office, even for one weekend.

In the 1990s, particularly the first half of the 1990s, that wasn't so much the case though. In fact, many films that have long since fallen from the public conscious topped the chart. And in this piece, I've tried to capture some of them.

Inevitably, you're going to have heard of some of them, and what a UK dweller sees as a...

Rob Cohen's half-baked erotic thriller plays like a misguided homage to Eighties video fare and to family-in-peril sagas like Unlawful Entry or Cape Fear. Jennifer Lopez plays Claire Peterson, a mom and a high-school English literature teacher who likes her Homer and her Virgil. Her husband (Corbett) has been cheating on her and they've separated, leaving her home alone with her troubled teenage son.

The arrival of WolfCop inspires us to take a look back at horror cinema's most unpredictable janitors, doctors, dentists and more...

Can we necessarily trust the dentist who stands over us with a tiny drill in his hand? Isn't the guy who's come round to install our cable television service just a bit too friendly for comfort? And the cop outside in his squad car - isn't he just a little bit, I don't know, hairy?

Some of cinema's darkest, most unpredictable and downright interesting characters often have the most mundane jobs, from teachers to photo developers and taxi drivers to school janitors. It's characters like these we're saluting here - some of them villainous, others strangely likeable despite their dark activities, while others are simply misunderstood.

So here's our pick of the most terrifying public sector workers in horror cinema, inspired by the imminent release of WolfCop - director...

Summer movie season is a magic time of year when Hollywood traditionally rolls out its most appealing merchandise. It’s true that some summer movie seasons are better than others. This is our ranking of all the summer movie seasons since 1980 from worst to best.

On January 20th, 1975, Steven Spielberg and Universal Studios released Jaws. The movie landscape would be forever changed from that date. Jaws is widely credited as being the first blockbuster film because it was the first movie to make over $100 million (non-adjusted). The fact that the film had a meager $8 million budget meant that it was a huge cash cow for the studio and rocketed Spielberg to the the forefront of a new generation of filmmakers for a new era of movie mass-consumption. George Lucas and Spielberg followed up in 1977 with Star Wars, which became a sensational and very profitable hit. It helped to convince production...

Unlawful Entry: Donohue’s Debut a Promising Idea with Faulty Execution

Director Zachary Donohue brings the home invasion thriller to the millennial doorstep with his directorial debut, The Den. Unfortunately, the advanced technology that furthers the narrative of his film gets reduced to a gimmick, wedding itself to the same glorious faults of the found footage genre as it manages to arrive feeling just a titch outdated already, as well as managing to be a visual eyesore with its insistence on unfolding almost exclusively from computer and/or phone cams. Distant, very distant echoes of classic women in peril films from the vaults of vintage Hollywood may put one in mind of something fun and classy (and incredibly campy) like the sickly Barbara Stanwyck character in Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), an element that lends Donohue’s material incredible and unprecedented mileage in building tension. But an eventual marriage with standard...

Los Angeles — Characters are frequently urged to "release the beast" in "The Purge," a high-concept home-invasion shocker set in a future where one night a year, all crime is legal. But what should be a clammy exercise in claustrophobic, queasy tension becomes, in the hands of writer/director James DeMonaco, an underpowered compendium of over-familiar scare tactics and sledgehammer-subtle social satire. The intriguingly nightmarish premise may well rustle up a decent opening weekend for a picture that comes with the imprimatur of producer Michael Bay before the lukewarm word of mouth hastens its trip to DVD and VOD.

The hostiles-in-the-house sub-genre is, of course, ideal for small-screen viewing, turning the comforting spaces of the domestic environment into shadowy hiding places for miscreants. Five years ago, Bryan Bertino's "The Strangers" opened one weekend earlier to reap healthy returns, and DeMonaco tips his hat to that predecessor by having his psychopaths...

Clint Eastwood will have lost a few Brownie points for his bizarre and frankly ill-advised conversation with an empty chair at the Republican National Congress last autumn, but he is still much-adored Hollywood royalty – old and craggy, but still directing and acting to a phenomenally high standard and responsible as actor and/or director for some of the greatest and most iconic films ever to have come out of Hollywood.

Most often associated with Westerns and understandably so (the Dollars trilogy, High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider, Unforgiven), Eastwood also has a sterling track record within the crime genre (Dirty Harry, Mystic River, In the Line of Fire, Play Misty for Me) and with straight dramas too (Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino, A Perfect World, Changeling). With Oscar statuettes and nominations coming out of his ears, he is clearly much loved by the Academy, but critics and...

Review Ryan Lambie 29 Mar 2013 - 08:46

A crime drama starring Ryan Gosling, The Place Beyond The Pines is a bleak yet rewarding character study, Ryan writes...

Ryan Gosling strides into The Place Beyond The Pines like a mythical being straight out of 50s Hollywood: with the melancholic cool of James Dean, he rides his rasping motorcycle in a ball of death for a travelling carnival, while Eva Mendes swoons over his pumped-up physique and patchwork of tattoos. But director Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine) does more than riff on Gosling's post-Drive ascension to heart-throb status; instead, his film gets under the skin of cinema's romantic view of the rugged outlaw archetype, revealing a more depressing underlying truth about wealth and status.

In an attempt to provide for his ex-lover Romina (Mendes) and their infant son, motorcycle rider Luke (Gosling) quits his carnival act and embarks on a bank robbing spree across Schenectady,...

I never would have guessed that Ray Liotta hasn't seen "Field of Dreams," in which he plays Shoeless Joe Jackson. It's true that some actors don't enjoy watching their own performances, but "Field of Dreams" is an extreme example because that's a really hard movie to avoid. I also never would have guessed that Frank Sinatra's daughter sent a horse's head autographed by Warren Beatty to Liotta before he portrayed the Chairman of the Board in "The Rat Pack." Then again, these are the kinds of things you learn when you spend a healthy amount of time talking about a film -- in this case, Andrew Dominik's quite excellent "Killing Them Softly" -- with a veteran actor whose role isn't all that terribly large. (Even Brad Pitt, the star of the movie, doesn't show up until 30 minutes in.)

In "Killing Them Softly," Liotta plays Markie, a man who...

For some reason, Robert Mitchum's Max Cady in the original "Cape Fear" lands at only No. 28 on the AFI's list of the top 50 on-screen villains of all time. (That's just one notch above Mitchum's Rev. Harry Powell in "Night of the Hunter," a similarly terrifying killer, the one with "L-o-v-e" and "H-a-t-e" tattooed on his knuckles.) Really, Mitchum's Cady ought to be much higher up. After all, there are plenty of stalkers and murderers on the list, but how many also imbue their characters with such a perverse air of sexual menace? Only a handful: Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) in "Blue Velvet," Noah Cross (John Huston) in "Chinatown," Alex De Large (Malcolm McDowell) in "A Clockwork Orange," and Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) in "Psycho." "Psycho" was clearly a touchstone for "Cape Fear," which marks its 50th anniversary this month. Besides a villain with a dark sexual history and twisted tastes,...

We caught up with Martha Marcy May Marlene director to chat about the making of his fantastic, disturbing indie-drama…

One of the lesser-trumpeted omissions from last week's Oscar nominations, Martha Marcy May Marlene finally arrives in the UK after wowing festival folk the world over in 2011.

Centering on Elizabeth Olsen's many-named Martha, a girl who finds herself drawn into a cult-like community led by John Hawkes' Patrick, it's a hugely impressive film, lifted by a career-making turn from Olsen and a performance by Hawkes that's every bit as good as, and even more unnerving than, his Oscar-nominated role in Winter's Bone.

So when the film's writer-director Sean Durkin graced London with his impressively-bearded presence, 13 minutes in his company was hard to resist. Here's what he had to say about Buddhism, Hollywood thrillers from the 90s, and why there may be a bit of the 80s slasher movie in Martha Marcy May Marlene.

Much ballyhoo is made over the ever-changing appearance of our beloved Bravo Real Housewives. But never before have the Househusbands from the various locales been put up against one another in a no holds barred Hotness Ranking. Well that all chances today. Presenting Bwe.tv’s A Guide To The Real Househusbands, Ranked From Hot To Not. Most every husband or boyfriend from all the seasons — Orange County, New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, even D.C. — have been included. The only season we turned a blind eye to was Miami, because really, no one should have to think about that season. (And I’m a Miami native, so I should know.) So prepare to be turned on, and then slowly but increasingly turned off, as we rank the Real Househusbands from Hot To Not. Things are about to get extremely controversial. Mauricio Umansky Housewife: Kyle Richards Season: The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills...

Remember that cycle of "From Hell" movies in the 1990s? We had the babysitter from Hell in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle; the roommate from Hell in Single White Female; the tenant from Hell in Pacific Heights; the cop from Hell in Unlawful Entry; and so on... And now, very belatedly, here's Rose McGowan being menaced by the paperboy from Hell, in Victor Salva's Rosewood Lane.Except it looks as if there may be more to this particular antagonist than simply being a bit of a sociopath. Is there the hint of some supernatural shenanigans here? Frankly, it's too dark to really tell, but there are definite suggestions that Paperboy can do things beyond the ken of the other yoot, and that Rose isn't afraid of him like her neighbours know to be (wise warning imparted there by Rance Howard, in Fred Gwynne Pet Sematary mode).We're also...

With Street Kings 2: Motor City out on DVD this week (review here), which stars Ray Liotta and Shawn Hatosy as a pair of detectives investigating a spate of cop killings, we thought we’d take a look at star Ray Liotta’s most memorable roles on both the big, and small screen. So here it is, our Top 10 most memorable Ray Liotta roles…

10) Turbulence

A film that makes the list purely because of the insane performances of everyone involved, none more so than Ray Liotta as Ryan Weaver a murderer who is part of a Christmas Eve transfer of prisoners on a transcontinental 747 commercial flight. Of course once the aircraft takes off Liotta and his motley crew hijack the plane, with only stewardess Terri Halloran (Lauren Holly) to stop them And land the plane!

9) Hannibal

Another Liotta flick that only makes the list beacuse of it’s sheer ridiculousness...

Ray Liotta is set to once again play a police in A Place Beyond the Pines, starring opposite Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper as "a corrupt police officer." Gosling plays "a professional motorcycle rider who turns to bank robberies to support his newborn son, but when he crosses paths with a rookie police officer (Cooper) their confrontation spirals into a generational feud."

Derek Cianfrance is set to direct from a script he co-wrote with Ben Coccio. Pines is being produced by Sidney Kimmel, Lynette Howell, Alex Orlovsky and Jamie Patricof. Howell, Orlovsky and Patricof also produced Blue Valentine. Ske President Jim Tauber and Ske Production president Matt Berenson are serving as executive producers. Filming is slated to being this summer on the project.

Liotta just wrapped Cogan's Trade starring Brad Pitt. Liotta has played a cop ten times in such films, as Unlawful Entry, Cop Land, Narc, Smokin' Aces, Observe and Report,...