Anniversary

I: Context It’s difficult to name a director more influential to the teenage film landscape than John Hughes; for that matter, it’s difficult to name a director who left such a tangible mark on Hollywood…

The Misfits is quite an obscure little movie. Despite it being the last performance for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, it isn’t talked about quite enough. Many people most likely don’t even know it exists.…

Do you remember the cable movie? Not the made-for-cable ones, but the movie that would grow its popularity with consistent runs on networks like TBS, TNT, and USA. These were typically movies that ranged from…

Mutations. Zombies. Mutilation. Violence. Disease. Contagion. Transformation. These are some of the elements of the subgenre called “body horror”. You might think that this is a recent phenomenon. But nothing could be further from the…

It’s been 10 years since the release of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and hence, 10 years since I was totally enthralled and disturbed by it as a 14-year-old. When I first heard the film’s ominous…

When I first laid eyes on Leap Year, I was an impressionable 20-year-old on the cusp of 21-year-old greatness. I was slowly saving money and making plans for my Graduation Trip, in part eager to…

The Shawshank Redemption turns 25 this week. Other than the current age of its actors, the film doesn’t show its age. I had the opportunity to revisit it on the big screen for its quarter-century anniversary.…

I have said it before, and I will say it again, 1989 was the year great movies were made. Romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally is such an example; wonderfully scripted and with a cast…

I should warn you, this retrospective on the 20th anniversary of Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam is going to make me sound like a prude. Despite the risk of said label, I maintain that this movie…

It seems like every day a random movie is celebrating a random anniversary. As nice as it is to be reminded of Jet Li’s The One, there is no need to acknowledge its 17-year anniversary.…

The surviving crew of a damaged deep-space harvester have minutes to reach the emergency evacuation shuttle. A motion sensor is their only navigation tool leading them to safety while a creature in the shadows terrorizes…

It has been a few months since I turned 30, which of course made me think of this fantastic rom-com with the beautiful Jennifer Garner. The movie was released 15 years ago, yet she looks…

My introduction to Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot was not a conventional one. When my dad’s video store closed thanks to the Blockbuster boom, he gave a lot of the VHS tapes to my…

In a world that is rife with corruption, The China Syndrome has much to tell us, even after forty years. The China Syndrome is a thriller about an accident at a nuclear plant. A reporter…

January 30th marked the 10 year anniversary of Taken, a film that took moviegoers by surprise almost instantaneously. It became a hit with fans, with many praising it for its original story, message, and the butt-kicking…

The ‘90s were wild. Time was, you could assemble a gaggle of fresh-faced young actors, give them relatively little to do except be incredibly attractive, add in a rad soundtrack, maybe some celeb cameos — and…

It’s easy to dismiss Sleeping Beauty as your average princess-centered Disney film. Its plot bears many surface similarities to Snow White, mainly the slumbering royalty awoken by a kiss. What saves Sleeping Beauty from being…

Twenty years ago, The Thin Red Line (1998) hit theaters nationwide. I wonder how many people still remember this thought-provoking film. It had a tough competitor that year at the Oscars: Saving Private Ryan (1998). Not only that,…

On December 15th, 1978, Richard Donner made the world believe a man could fly. Superman was a watershed in special effects, music, and most importantly, how we see superheroes on the big screen. In a…

Twilight is the movie we all love to hate on. We hate on Bella, we loathe the portrayal of vampires and let’s just face it, the movie isn’t that well done either. We hate it…

Fifty years ago, this month saw the release of a low-budget horror movie called Night of the Living Dead. The director, George A. Romero, and everyone involved did not anticipate how this film would become…

The movie version of The Wiz was released October 24, 1978. I was released in December of the same year. So, you could say we’ve grown up together. The Wiz came to represent different things,…

Believe it or not, I actually only watched American History X this year. It does seem strange that someone who writes for a film site like MovieBabble, and who generally perceives herself to be quite…

Sometimes, we are presented with a choice when it comes to the direction that our life will take. We can silently go along with what is expected of us, or we can go with what…

Bullitt, a crime/action movie, was first released fifty years ago today. Starring Steve McQueen and Robert Vaughn, it’s far more intelligent than you might expect, and it has become a cinema classic. The Synopsis Just…

The family sitcoms of the 1950’s presented the image of a perfect white middle-class suburban family. Dad went to work at an unknown office job and Mom not only kept an immaculate house, but looked…

The Return of the King turns fifteen later this year. In celebration of this great occasion, let’s imagine eleven new Oscar categories, both serious and irreverent, that could have been created for the glorious final chapter…

The 70s must have been quite the time to be livin in. Yes, L-I-V-I-N. Well, I actually don’t know since I am a 90s baby, but I can get an idea of what it was…

Sometimes a movie catches you at exactly the right moment; a sweet spot of time, place, and circumstance where you’ll buy whatever that movie is selling. I watched Cocktail when I was a teenager at a…

Disney’s  36th animated feature film turned twenty-years-old this month. That’s right! On June 19, 1998, Mulan was released to throngs of Disney-obsessed Millennials, pre-iPhone era. That means painfully long box office lines of 10-year-old birthday party attendees, T-shirts…