Tag: movies (Page 3 of 5)

Favorite Movies About Dragons

October 28, 2025 / Zander

Dragonslayer (Matthew Robbins, 1981)
Dragonheart (Rob Cohen, 1996)
Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
Reign of Fire (Rob Bowman, 2002)
How to Train your Dragon (Sanders & DeBlois, 2010)
Age of the Dragons (Ryan Little, 2011)

In chronological order.

The seventies were the decade of disaster movies, and no series represents that better than the Airport franchise. Airport (1970), directed by George Seaton and produced by Ross Hunter, is one of the defining films of the disaster genre. In fact, it created it. Based on Arthur Hailey’s 1968 best-selling novel, the movie portrays the crisis-filled operations of a Chicago airport during a blizzard, culminating in a bomb threat aboard a Boeing 707. With its ensemble cast (Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, Jacqueline Bisset, George Kennedy, Helen Hayes, Van Heflin), glossy production, and high-stakes melodrama, Airport was a massive

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The Innocents: essence of the fantastic

September 23, 2025 / Zander

Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw is famous for being slippery. Are the ghosts real, or is the governess losing her mind? The 1961 film The Innocents keeps that same spirit of uncertainty, but instead of James’s careful prose, it uses images, sound, and atmosphere to create doubt. The story is essentially the same, but the movie sharpens the tension, leaning into the creepy sexuality and suppressed desire that James only hinted at. Where the book makes you question every line, the film makes you question every shot. The script started with a stage adaptation, but Truman Capote

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Three Dredds

September 9, 2025 / Zander

I’ve recently had the chance to see two movies I had never seen, Judge Dredd (Danny Cannon, 1995) and Dredd (Pete Travis, 2012). They are both adaptations of the comic strip Judge Dredd, but they differ significantly from each other. Judge Dredd first appeared in 1977 in 2000 AD, a British weekly anthology comic, created by writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra. The strip was a reaction against both American superhero excess and the bleak prospects of late-20th-century urban life. The setting, Mega-City One, was a sprawling dystopian metropolis stretching along the American eastern seaboard, plagued by crime, unemployment,

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Watching Anime: Speed Racer

July 29, 2025 / Zander

As with many successful anime tv series, Speed Racer started on the printed page. Tatsuo Yoshida’s original manga Mach GoGoGo (serialized between 1966 and 1968) emerged during Japan’s rapid modernization and automotive fascination. A product of its time, it combined elements of heroic storytelling, spy thrillers, and science fiction, inspired by both James Bond and Japanese racing culture. It followed Go Mifune (translated as Speed Racer in English), a hotheaded but honorable young driver who dreams of becoming a world-class racer with his technologically advanced Mach 5 car. Yoshida’s art was clean, dynamic, and expressive, prioritizing kinetic energy and sharp

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The Yokai Trilogy

June 17, 2025 / Zander

Yokai are a category of supernatural monsters from Japanese folklore. They encompass a wide range of beings, from mischievous spirits to fearsome monsters, and are often associated with strange phenomena and unexplained events. In the late 1960s, Daiei Studios created a trilogy of films with this theme, managing to make each one distinct from the others, much like the yokai themselves. Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters (original title: Yōkai Hyaku Monogatari, literally One Hundred Yōkai Tales), released in 1968, is the first in the trilogy. Directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda (better known for his work on the Zatoichi series), the film combines

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Reinventing the myth of Jason and the Argonauts

June 3, 2025 / Zander

After watching Ray Harryhausen’s three Sinbad movies (see Traveling with Sinbad and Ray Harryhausen), I wanted to rewatch Jason and the Argonauts, and this week I did just that. Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) remains one of the most enduring cinematic retellings of Greek mythology. Not because of narrative accuracy but because of its visionary special effects, evocative score, and mythic tone. Though the film adapts the ancient myth of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, it does so with considerable creative liberty, transforming the story into a fantasy epic for mid-20th-century audiences. At the heart of its

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Watching Anime: The Many Faces of Astro Boy

May 20, 2025 / Zander

Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atom) is more than just a cartoon character. He’s a cornerstone of modern Japanese pop culture and a foundational figure in global science fiction storytelling. Created by Osamu Tezuka, the so-called “God of Manga”, Astro Boy first appeared on the printed page in 1952, eventually becoming the star of Japan’s first major animated television series in 1963. Astro is instantly recognizable with his big round eyes (according to Tezuka, inspired by Disney’s Bambi), jet-powered limbs, and heart of gold. But behind his charming appearance lies one of fiction’s most poignant origin stories: a tale of loss, abandonment,

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Five Pearl Harbors

May 6, 2025 / Zander

I’ve recently watched six movies that featured the Japanese attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. It’s so interesting how they all used the historical event in different ways and with different purposes. From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953) ends with the attack. Before that, we see the intersecting lives of several characters around the island. Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift), Sergeant Milton Warden (Burt Lancaster), and Private Angelo Maggio (Frank Sinatra) navigate the tensions of military life in Pearl Harbor. Karen Holmes (Deborah Kerr), the wife of Warden’s commanding officer, and Alma

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M x 3

March 11, 2025 / Zander

I always find it interesting how different moviemakers adapt the same book for the screen. But it feels a bit uncomfortable when the source material is not a book but another movie. It’s like the director of the remake is saying to the original director, “I can make your movie better than you can”. And, more often than not, it’s not better. With very few exceptions (like Scarface, The Fly, or The Departed), remakes have very little to offer. This week, I watched one original movie and two remakes, just trying to understand why someone would think it was a

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