This had to have been one of the more diverse groupings of films we’ve had for the MOTM. True, it’s not as though there were any foreign films or silents or docs, but we had a classic horror flick, a classic noir, a sci-fi thriller, a sports comedy, and whatever Dark City fits into.
However, what started as a close race pretty quickly became a blowout, as Dan Heaton’s selection of Double...
Larry Clark is perhaps best known for the 1995 film Kids, which launched the careers of quite a few people: Rosario Dawson, Chloe Sevingy, Harmony Korrine, and Clark himself. But his 2001 film Bully – not to be confused with the 2011 documentary of the same name – is a similar piece of filmmaking, dealing with the angst and lifestyles of (mostly) teenagers, this time in Florida. It’s also based on a...
** Some news and changes to the MOTM/MOTM Champions this month. Read on for the skinny. **
Well, it’s been an up-and-down week or so for the MOTM Champions angle. Your Shepherd, Joel Burman, was the only one to throw his hat into the ring for July, so I was all set to kill Champions and go back to just having me select five random films and having you vote on them.
But then a funny...
Long before Peter Jackson became known for becoming J.R.R. Tolkien or remaking King Kong, he was that big, hairy fella from New Zealand known for grossout horror comedies. His third feature was 1992’s Dead Alive , a film that wasn’t received all that well two decades ago but is now seen as a cult classic. The gang from French Toast Sunday championed the film after barely losing out to American...
It was one of the lower voted-upon MOTM polls we’ve had in a while, but it was so less tense. Dead Alive was pretty much staked out to a two-vote lead over The Incredibles from the start, and that’s exactly how it ended. Every time I looked at the results, that’s what it showed me. Weird. In the end, the Peter Jackson grossout took the vote, giving French Toast Sunday the win. As such, FTS becomes...
Feels like forever since we’ve had one of these, no?
A serial killer horror-comedy period piece…in the wrong hands, American Psycho might have been a nightmare all its own. But director Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol), who also adapted the screenplay of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel, delivered a pop culture postcard complete with one of the all-time great breakout roles in Christian Bale’s...
Not sure where the debate from last month went when it came to the choices for this MOTM. Sure, none of these are quite as beloved as The Princess Bride, but I think the central argument is still there. On the surface, we have a polished, widely seen, mostly-regarded-as-a-classic film in American Psycho (long a film blogger favorite) versus three less-loved, less-widely known films in White Men Can’t Jump,...
It was billed as an epic showdown and, for the most part, it turned out that way. Two potential Champions have each been throwing out a certain film for several months now, so we decided to do something unique for the MOTM poll. Jason Soto of Your Face has been tossing out Primer and Nick Powell of The Cinematic Katzenjammer has been throwing out The Princess Bride. The idea was this: A Loser Goes Home...
I don’t want to say that MOTM poll winner Justin (of Man, I Love Films) did anything improper to not only win the poll but destroy the competition (especially since he’s a friend of mine and writes for my site), but let’s just say that the reaction to his choice of film and the amount of reactions from LAMB members didn’t exactly substantiate the pick. And yet, it’s not as though we on the LAMBcast came up...
I don’t know what to tell you, but this contest was over before it started. Not sure what Justin of Man, I Love Films used to bribe people, but it worked (and he assured me that his campaigning was all “legit”). Identity destroyed the field from about two hours into the polling all the way through the end, winning with over 40% of the vote. As such, Justin becomes the latest Champion and has won a...
I could easily lead off with some joke about how abstract Last Year at Marienbad is or how much I want to play Nim or what those people standing there like mannequins might have been thinking the whole time this film was made, but frankly, I think we did enough of that on the podcast (see below). Suffice to say, Marienbad is a strange, interesting, boring, mysterious, exciting, beautiful, bizarre film…often times all...
It started off as a tight race between all five films, but it didn’t take long for two to break from the pack. In the end, the pick from Brian Roan of Dear Film, 1961’s Last Year at Marienbad, took home the prize (see poll results below). As such, Brian becomes the latest Champion and has won a chair in the LAMBcast in which we’ll discuss the film, and the hosting rights to the MOTM segment (more...