FilmMattic

What's Good In The Hood?       First order of business: You can find Part I of my "What I've Been Watching" segment here and my inaugural edition here . Of course, my newest edition can be found below.       My current mood: an inextricable combination of heat wave desperation and heat wave desperation. I can't recall CT EVER being this hot. Recordings touched 105 degrees earlier today, but, because of the heat index, temperatures felt closer to 115 degrees. This blistering heat has me feeling like a baked meatball. Not because I'm Italian. It's just so damn hot, my sweat is sweating. But I digress; back to the movie talk.        It takes a cool guy to cool you off. And no blogger is cooler than Craig over @ Let's Get Out Of Here!   Beyond an idiosyncratic taste in film and an arsenal of wit that would make James Bond cower, Craig writes informative, engaging and hilarious posts concerning all-thin...

Unforgiven       I could never forgive myself if I shied away from one of my favorite genres (the Western) and its greatest revisionist, Old morality tale ( Unforgiven). Clint Eastwood made my day so many times before. It's only natural that I reciprocate the classic gesture. I love gangster movies—and Brian De Palma's The Untouchables is a breathtaking incarnation of Prohibition Era crime life—but your just not going to see The Usual Suspects represented in my Alphabetic U niverse. Bryan Singer's noirish yarn about "a bunch of criminals who meet in a police line-up" provides one of the great cinematic twists, but it doesn't boast an ensemble of Eastwood, Freeman, and Hackman nor does it provide the luster of the mythic Old West (though Singer's cast is damn fine too). I've been Sucker Punch ed by crime films before. Eastwood's Westerns, however, never disappoint. Foolhardy proclamation or not, I made sure to save a seat for The Man With No Nam...

Some Like It Hot, Seven Samurai, Seven, Saving Private Ryan, Scarface, Spider-Man 2, Snatch,  Superman (1978), Serpico, Solaris (1972)       I mistakenly thought the glutton of great films ended at "R"... Big mistake. Yet again, I must cull as aggressively and shrewdly as I can. For starters, I'm purposely avoiding any titles that start with "The" because it would be virtually impossible otherwise (if you don't believe me, see the contenders above). I do realize I broke this rule a few times already, but those were three very special and extenuating cases for three absolute film classics. I've already awarded Star Wars Episode V: The E mpire Strikes Back, so my pick's not coming from a galaxy far, far away. I love classic westerns—what can be better than the film that launched John Wayne's career—but sadly, Stagecoach doesn't earn my spot. And Some Like It Hot is a timeless comedy from the versatile mind of Billy Wilder, but it has been so l...