Flashback MMM: Casino

“…just like De Niro in Casino.” we hear Will Ferrell’s Scott Johansen say in the trailer for The House as he considers sending a very painful message to a gambler who’s been cheating. That callback to the Martin Scorsese-directed crime drama is all the excuse I need to use it as the basis for this …

Flashback MMM: Three Films of Sofia Coppola

Sofia Coppola has had what could accurately be described as an incredible career as a director. Beginning in 1999 with The Virgin Suicides, each movie has been a unique thing, a touchpoint for the culture, it seems, as well as often being a lightning rod. She’s never not taken chances, though, even if her movies …

Flashback MMM: Superman

This past Monday was Superman Day, which is admittedly a made up holiday. It combines almost 40 years Metropolis, IL has held its annual Superman Celebration and the anniversary of “Man of Steel Day,” which DC Entertainment introduced in 2013 as part of the lead-in to the release of Man of Steel. Metropolis picked the …

Flashback MMM: The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer

This weekend Showtime debuts “Becoming Cary Grant,” a documentary about the great actor’s life and career. Watch the trailer and you’ll see that it’s about identity, with the grown man working hard to keep up the image of someone that didn’t quite match who he felt he really was but felt pressure to maintain. That’s …

Flashback MMM: Waiting For Guffman

This past Wednesday, Chicago’s Music Box Theater hosted a special event with writer/director/actor Christopher Guest where he talked about not only his own movies but also those that influenced him. That provided enough reason for me (I don’t need much of one) to revisit the marketing of Guest’s 1997 classic comedy Waiting for Guffman, which …

Flashback MMM: Star Wars

I wasn’t planning to write about Star Wars this week. There was another movie I had in mind to jump back and take a look back at the movie for and I had an angle in mind and everything. But over the last week I’ve seen so much celebration of this being the 40th anniversary …

Flashback MMM: Singles

The timing couldn’t be more tragic. Chris Cornell, the lead singer of Soundgarden, one of the big “grunge” bands to come out of the Seattle scene of the early 1990s, passed away just a day before the planned reissue of one of the iconic movie soundtracks of that era, Singles. That movie and its accompanying …

Flashback MMM: The Player

This year has brought with a lot of talk about the 25th anniversary of Wayne’s World, the Mike Myers/Dana Carvey comedy classic that brought already well-known “SNL” characters to the big screen. It’s aso been a time to celebrate a quarter century since writer/director Quentin Tarantino announced his presence as a major new filmmaker when …

Flashback MMM: Being There

Hal Ashby’s 1979 dry comedy classic Being There has been in the news again recently, thanks largely to the movie finally receiving a new edition as part of The Criterion Collection. And so, because it’s never a bad time to talk about this movie and despite it being a couple months after that release hit …

Flashback MMM: Alien

This past Wednesday was #AlienDay, a day 20th Century Fox designated to celebrate the legacy of the franchise that started with 1979’s Ridley Scott-directed horror classic and which continues with the upcoming release of Alien: Covenant. It’s a publicity stunt, to be sure, and involved live events on the Fox lot with the cast of …