Search for 1984

Most movies about artists (painters, composers, authors, etc.) tend to be dull and uninspired, rendering the subject of the film far less interesting than his or her work. Amadeus is an exception. In fact, it is arguably the best motion picture e...

Upon its release in 1984, Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense was hailed by many critics as the "greatest concert film of all time." The picture, which captured a live concert performance given by the Talking Heads, used state-of-the-art direct-to-...

Upon its release in 1984, Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense was hailed by many critics as the "greatest concert film of all time." The movie, which captured a live concert performance given by the Talking Heads, used state-of-the-art direct-t...

Good comedy stands the test of time. Two of the funniest movies I recall seeing arrived in theaters during the early 1980s. One, Airplane, a spoof of the Airport series (and disaster movies in general), has withered on the vine of changing times....

Sometimes, pure technical accuracy isn't enough. Sometimes, artistry has to be taken into account. One such case in point is Barry Levision's The Natural, arguably the best baseball movie ever made. The film works not because it is flawless in i...

"Whatever you do, don't fall asleep." - Nancy The dream - or nightmare - is a staple of the modern horror movie. After all, even as manipulative as the device is, it's still a proven way to jolt an audience. Filmmaker Wes Craven understood th...

The Terminator, the film that catapulted Arnold Schwarzengger into Hollywood's stratosphere, was never designed for more than a niche audience. Indeed, while the film made a nice profit for Orion Pictures (returning grosses about six times its cos...

With a title like The Search for Spock, did anyone really expect that they wouldn't find the erstwhile first officer? So, with the resolution never in doubt (especially considering that Leonard Nimoy was directing), the real question to ask is...

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, the first theatrical collaboration of Japanese animation icons Hayao Miyazaki (directing his second feature film) and Isao Takahata, led directly to the formation of Studio Ghibli, which was founded only a l...

The 16-year wait between the 1968 opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the 1984 release of 2010 doesn't represent the longest interval between a movie and its direct sequel (that distinction probably belongs to Gone With the Wind/Scarlett, although...