by Walter Chaw I’ve spent decades predicting the fall, but when the fall came, I certainly didn’t feel like doing a victory lap. When the pandemic shut down everything for a while, I realized that my worst fears had come true, and then, for the first time in as long as I could remember, my depression quieted like a rash that’s lost its savagery. Respite, because my worst fears weren’t looming anymore–they’d finally arrived. All that was left to do was find a new way through. Is th...| FILM FREAK CENTRAL
Note: all framegrabs were sourced from the 4K UHD discs SUPERMAN (1978) ****/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras A- starring Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Ned Beatty screenplay by Mario Puzo, David Newman, Leslie Newman and Robert Benton directed by Richard Donner SUPERMAN II (1981) ***/**** Image A+ Sound B+ Extras A- starring Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Ned Beatty, Jackie Cooper screenplay by Mario Puzo, David Newman and Leslie Newman directed by Richard Lester SUPERMAN II ...| FILM FREAK CENTRAL
2019 will be defined for me by two things–one is interesting, the other is not. The “not” is that my friend Sam killed himself. He used a gun. Sam and I disagreed about guns. He had been in various levels of law enforcement, retired to be a 9-1-1 operator, found himself traumatized after his service, and moved across the country to be closer to his young daughter and ex-wife. To be a dad, you know. Sam owned a lot of guns, but in the last couple of years, he began to ask me about statis...| FILM FREAK CENTRAL
March 9, 2003 | Offered the opportunity to visit with David Cronenberg a second time recently, I sat down with the legendary director the morning after moderating a post-screening Q&A with him at Denver’s Landmark Mayan Theater (where a sell-out crowd of over 450 was enthusiastically in attendance for a sneak of Spider) to discuss his work from student films Stereo and Crimes of the Future all the way through to what is arguably his best–certainly his most mature–film, the oft-delayed ...| FILM FREAK CENTRAL