John Cox

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movieweb.com

The Best Revenge Westerns of All Time, Ranked

A MovieWeb ranked list counting down ten essential revenge westerns, arguing that vengeance-driven plots showcase the genre's best qualities—complex antiheroes, moral ambiguity, and violent reckonings. It moves from Netflix's The Harder They Fall and Tarantino's Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight through Eastwood classics like Unforgiven and The Outlaw Josey Wales, topping the list with Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Worth keeping mainly as a quick watchlist/reference for standout entries in the revenge-western subgenre across decades and styles.

Permalink westernfilmquentin tarantinospaghetti western

movieweb.com

The 20 Most Underrated Movies of the 1980s

A ranked rundown of 1980s films the writer thinks deserve more love than they got, spanning ten entries from Weir's "The Mosquito Coast" through De Palma's "Body Double" and Parker's "Angel Heart," each judged against its box-office haul, critical reception, and star power (Ford, Cruise, Rourke, De Niro, Bigelow's directing debut era, etc.). The throughline is that quality filmmaking and strong casts often didn't translate into ticket sales or contemporary acclaim, leaving these titles as cult favorites rather than recognized classics. Worth keeping as a watchlist of genre-spanning deep cuts—horror-Western, neo-noir, sci-fi, gangster drama—from a stacked decade.

Permalink underratedfilmdrama1980s

movieweb.com

8 Modern Sci-Fi Movies That Will Someday Become Cult Classics

A roundup piece nominating eight 2010s-2020s sci-fi films — including The Martian, High Life, Godzilla (2014), Underwater, Annihilation, Edge of Tomorrow, The Invisible Man, and M3GAN — as future cult classics, arguing each blends genre conventions with distinctive artistry, divisive tone, or emotional depth that could earn devoted fandoms over time. It's less a ranked list than a case for why each film's particular weirdness or ambition (from Mark Watney's potatoes to M3GAN's sassy menace) sets it apart from typical studio sci-fi. Worth keeping as a watchlist with actual arguments attached rather than just titles.

Permalink film2010ssci-fia24

kottke.org

Tarantino’s Fan Fiction: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Kirby Ferguson's video essay traces how Tarantino's signature remix technique evolved past overt film-quoting (à la Kill Bill) into something subtler in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, where he remixes real historical events, figures, and Hollywood lore rather than other movies' footage. The argument is that the copying habit never stopped—only the source material shifted from cinema to reality itself. Worth keeping for the reframing of Tarantino's "originality" as a continuation, not abandonment, of his remix ethos.

Permalink filmvideoquentin tarantinomovies

screenrant.com

10 Best International Superhero Movies That Rival Hollywood

This roundup surveys ten non-Hollywood superhero films—from Japan's grim Devilman and India's mythic blockbuster Krrish to Korea's satirical Psychokinesis, France's noir-inflected How I Became a Superhero, and Britain's deadpan SuperBob and iBoy—to argue that the genre's core themes of power and identity translate distinctly across cultures rather than belonging to Marvel and DC alone. It's essentially a curated watchlist making the case that grounded, low-budget, or culturally specific takes (an Australian office worker's imagined vigilantism, an Indonesian goddess rooted in Javanese folklore, retired heroes in an Irish care home) often dig into loneliness, aging, and morality more intimately than mainstream blockbusters do. Worth keeping as a reference for genre films that use superpowers as metaphor rather than spectacle.

Permalink filmsuperheroindiafrance

faroutmagazine.co.uk

Ranking all 52 surviving feature films directed by Alfred Hitchcock

This is a full countdown ranking all 52 surviving Hitchcock films from worst to best, pairing each entry with a short assessment, production trivia, and the official plot synopsis. The list runs from silent-era curiosities and studio-contract obligations like "Juno and the Paycock" and "Champagne" at the bottom, through mid-tier thrillers like "Notorious" and "Strangers on a Train," up to "Vertigo" at number one, followed by "Psycho" and "Rear Window". It's worth keeping as a reference guide for working through Hitchcock's entire filmography with quick context on where each title sits critically and why.

Permalink thrillerfilm

collider.com

10 Most Underrated War Movies of the Past 5 Years, Ranked

This Collider list counts down ten war films from the past five years that the author feels have been unfairly overlooked, spanning journalism dramas, POW/detention stories, Cold War espionage, and combat pictures. Rather than a straightforward ranking of quality, it's organized around true-story credibility, name-checking specific real figures (Marie Colvin, Franz Jägerstätter, Greville Wynne, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Harry Haft, Jesse Brown) and the performances that anchor each film, from Rosamund Pike to Ben Foster to Jonathan Majors. Worth keeping as a watchlist for lesser-known awards-adjacent war dramas rather than the usual Dunkirk/Oppenheimer-tier blockbusters.

Permalink underratedfilmwarrecommendations

collider.com

All 29 Ridley Scott Movies, Ranked From Worst to Best

Collider's Jeremy Urquhart ranks all 29 (or so) of Ridley Scott's feature films from worst to best, tracing a nearly 50-year career defined by remarkable genre-hopping and wildly inconsistent quality. The lower tier covered here includes acknowledged misfires like "Exodus: Gods and Kings," "Robin Hood," and "Hannibal," alongside more obscure or underrated entries such as "White Squall" and "Someone to Watch Over Me," with the piece weighing each film's reputation, box office fate, and rewatchability. It's a useful reference for gauging where Scott's lesser-known or maligned work actually falls before the list presumably climbs toward his acclaimed classics.

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collider.com

Jimmy Stewart Gave Us His Most Menacing Performance in This Western

This piece examines how "Winchester '73" marked a turning point for James Stewart, trading his wholesome pre-war persona for a morally ambiguous, violence-capable gunslinger under Anthony Mann's harsher directorial style. It traces the plot's gimmick of following a coveted rifle through various owners' hands as a device for Mann to interrogate frontier brutality, culminating in the revelation that Stewart's Lin and villain Dutch are estranged brothers, which turns a standard revenge plot into something closer to fratricidal tragedy. The write-up frames the film as the hinge between Stewart's earlier idealism and his subsequent darker collaborations with Hitchcock, making the case for why this particular western is a career-defining anomaly worth revisiting.

Permalink westernfilmclassicshollywood

collider.com

30 Best Robert Redford Movies, Ranked

A wide-ranging ranking of Robert Redford's acting and directing career, running from decent-but-forgettable studio fare like "Our Souls at Night" and "The Last Castle" up through more substantial work like "The Horse Whisperer" and "Brubaker." It's essentially a career retrospective published around his death in September 2025, mixing critical assessment with trivia about co-stars and collaborators (Fonda, Pitt, Gandolfini, a young Scarlett Johansson) across six decades of films. Worth keeping as a guided tour through the deep cuts of his filmography rather than just the obvious classics.

Permalink filmclassicshollywoodmovies

www.amazon.com

Untitled (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0084O26SI?ie=UTF8&tag=wyome-20&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393185&creativeASIN=B0084O26SI&qid=1356998637&sr=8-2&keywords=monsieur+lazhar)

Plays from YouTube. Nothing is loaded from Google until you press play.

I can't write a summary of this item because what you've shared is a product listing page for the DVD "Monsieur Lazhar" rather than a saved article. This appears to be a screenshot of an Amazon or similar retailer's product page showing pricing, specifications, and customer reviews for the film—not a written piece with an argument or reportage to summarize.

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kottke.org

eddieonfilm.blogspot.com

Edward Copeland on Film...and more: Comic Training, Sir!

Plays from YouTube. Nothing is loaded from Google until you press play.

This retrospective essay celebrates *Stripes* as a quintessential early-1980s comedy that channels the anarchistic spirit of SNL-era comedies through Bill Murray's deadpan performance and his chemistry with Harold Ramis as two directionless men who enlist in the Army to get their lives together. The piece traces the film's development from its origins as a Cheech and Chong concept, analyzes the brilliance of Murray's comedic choices and subtle physical humor, and credits director Ivan Reitman with casting Warren Oates as the perfect authoritarian foil and allowing improvisation on set to enhance the comedy. While acknowledging the weak final act set in an Eastern Bloc country, the author argues that the film's strong first two-thirds, witty dialogue, and ensemble cast make it one of Murray's finest comedies, though its premise feels dated in contemporary times when military service lacks the whimsical appeal it had during the Cold War.

Permalink filmcomedy1980sclassics

www.youtube.com