Author: Mike Gray
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Cult Classics: Fateful Findings
Why do we like terrible movies? Not just bad or mediocre movies – those are depressingly common and a distressing amount are released each year from major and independent studios alike. Those are then shuffled off into the catacombs of daytime airings on Showtime and the dregs of streaming services, never reaching over two stars…
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Perfect Movies: Dazed and Confused
Nostalgia is a powerful force. The sentimental longing for the past as it connects to personal and positive memories is the kind of feeling that, when brought up in conversation, makes older people unbearable to younger generations. Meanwhile, those who have gained a certain experience in life know that the callous youth that reject their nostalgic…
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Cult Classics: Grindhouse
The lurid exploitation films of the 60s, 70s, and 80s gave cheap thrills to filmgoing audiences looking to make out in the back seats of the theater or their cars, see a few gross kill-shots and grungy effects, or else enjoy the well-tread tropes and hackneyed cinematography that these films promised. Their enjoyment by cinephiles…
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Great TV: Spaced
Your 20s is a weird decade in life: being out on your own for the first time, trying to get a career going, and navigating the pitfalls of adult relationships without having much experience can be both exciting and frustrating. A lot of the time, it’s being surprised that you’ve either outgrown many things you’ve…
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Cult Classics: Big Trouble in Little China
“You know what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like this?” “Who?” “Jack Burton. Me!” Jack Burton and his truck, The Pork Chop Express, barrel into San Francisco’s Chinatown with a delivery while he gives a monologue over the CB airwaves that summarizes his character and general attitude: “When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac…
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TGIF Revisited: Full House – “Honey, I Broke The House”
Well, here we are: recapping an episode of the much-beloved, much-hated show Full House. I’ve been dreading this one, since I absolutely cannot stand this show and never have been able to. Oh sure, I watched it when I was a kid but would also rage at the TV when it was on because I…
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Totally 80’s: Kids Movies!
My folks took my sisters and I to the movies frequently when I was a kid, and I was lucky enough to see some great films in the theaters as a result, including Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Batman, and Back to the Future, Part II. Besides this, since my dad was such a film…
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Great TV: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Although this is primarily a movie site, television is also written about here, mostly because the lines between TV and film have become increasingly blurred over the years. Just as the series of articles on Great TV is a section of this site, there have been a fair amount of articles written about the terrible,…
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Great TV: The Addams Family
Let’s play a word association game. If I used the words creepy, kooky, mysterious, spooky, and ooky, my guess is that you would snap your fingers twice and say The Addams Family. And it’s amazing at just how deeply the TV show has permeated popular culture at this point: running from 1964 to 1966 and…
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Perfect Movies: Blazing Saddles
There are great films that change the landscape of cinema: your Citizen Kanes and Godfathers and Days of Heavens and such and such. Then you have films that are moving depictions of the human condition and of overcoming adversity to find one’s place in the world: The Color Purple, for example, and another film I’m…
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10 More Garbage TV Shows From The 80’s
Television knows how to make great TV…now. Before the present day, however, TV was considered a second-class form of entertainment that beginners and has-beens would work in. But considering how much money was being pumped into TV, and how much garbage was being produced with all that money, it’s hard to feel sympathetic about the…
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37 Saturday Morning Cartoons From The 90’s
Having previously surveyed some of the more insane Saturday morning cartoon shows from the 1990s, focusing on twelve 90’s cartoons adapted from movies, let’s plumb the depths of the cartoon bounty that the decade provided and look at 37(!) Saturday morning cartoon shows from the era. I got so excited at the beginning of every…
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