Essays and Featurettes

(Poster by Tim Doyle)

Here’s where you’ll find essays and commentaries on a variety of topics relating to the cinema world, with an emphasis on my favorite films and the directors and writers who made them.

This section is still a work in progress but I’ll get you started with some “Best” and “Worst” selections.  Highly subjective, of course, and bound to raise eyebrows:

Best Films

Worst Films

Now I’ll break my faves down into different genres:

Favorite Dramas

Mystery Movies

Favorite SF Films

Comedy Movies

War Movies

Favorite Westerns

Horror Movies

Best Documentaries

********************************************

 

Next:  Ten reasons why I’m not in any hurry to see “Avatar”:

Ten reasons

A brief memo to today’s film-makers on behalf of cinephiles with small bladders:

Memo to Film-Makers

And, finally, I offer you an essay I wrote a few years back that pays tribute to old style science fiction flicks.  The kind with silvery, finned spaceships and moon girls sporting about in tin foil bikinis.  “In Praise of Men in Rubber Suits” originally appeared on the website scifidimensions.com.  This one is dedicated to nostalgia buffs and fellow retro dudes (an aging, precarious demographic):

Men In Rubber Suits

2 Responses to Essays and Featurettes

  1. Sean says:

    Best films made me sit and ponder. Worst films made me laugh. Dr. Stranglove, a drama? It also seems as if you have a soft spot for heist/gangster movies… Although can’t say I disagree with any of your choices… (Lean back. Clap. Wait a second. Clap. Repeat as desired).

    • Cliff Burns says:

      I noticed a lot of crime/gangster flicks too–might be part of my thug Irish heritage–and not many comedies in my collection either. Very few Canadian movies (the loss of Jean Claude Lauzon the worst blow our film industry has ever suffered; he really was our best and brightest) and I need to see more “world” cinema, especially efforts from the Far East. Ah, well, just have to keep plugging away…and the internet is invaluable for picking up those hard to find movies one hears about. Great to hear from you, lad, and I hope my lists and critiques turn you on to some great films.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.