The 39 Steps was arguably Alfred Hitchcock’s most adventurous adaptation at the time that it was released. It’s based on the novel by John Buchan, published in 1915, [...]

The Waterboy marks the end of Adam Sandler’s golden period, taking elements from Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore and The Wedding Singer and crafting them into a synthesis that [...]

After perfecting his comic persona in Billy Madison, and relaxing it slightly in Happy Gilmore, Adam Sandler experimented with dissociating its two component parts in his [...]

The Dry is a pretty passable adaptation of a fairly readable novel – it’s not going to seriously disappoint any fans of the book but it never quite blooms into a film on [...]

While they’re renowned for their sparkling dialogue and witty repartee, Woody Allen’s films don’t tend to be especially remarkable for their visual beauty. Manhattan is [...]

Billy Madison was Adam Sandler’s most vital film, but Happy Gilmore was his most polished. In fact, Billy Madison nailed Sandler’s comic persona so purely and perfectly [...]

Mean Streets was the first epochal film in Martin Scorsese’s career – and he seemed to know it, opening with three motifs that signal the direction he would take over the [...]

Something vital occurs when an actor discovers their perfect persona – an extrapolation of their whole comic world that carries an entire world along with it. So it was [...]

All of Michael Cimino’s films are remarkable in one way or another, but he made two bona fide American epics during his peak in the late 1970s – Heaven’s Gate, and The [...]