The ‘80s in 40: ‘Red Dawn’ (August 1984) What if the Russians took over the United States? It might look a little like this 1984 action movie that turns American teens into guerrilla fighters.

Today at The Reveal: My ongoing '80s in 40 column reaches August 1984 with a look at RED DAWN:

I could probably do without the daily Disney+ inviting me to “Continue watching Cinderella.”

The ‘80s in 40: ‘Red Dawn’ (August 1984) What if the Russians took over the United States? It might look a little like this 1984 action movie that turns American teens into guerrilla fighters.

Today at The Reveal: My ongoing '80s in 40 column reaches August 1984 with a look at RED DAWN:

The clock is ticking. Now's your chance to get a big discount on a subscription to The Reveal _and_ make us record an audio commentary for the film of your choice.

No joke: PLANES: FIRE AND RESCUE was the first movie I took my kid to, in part because if it didn't go well, then, shrug, I didn't get to see PLANES: FIRE AND RESCUE. (It went fine.)

The clock is ticking. Now's your chance to get a big discount on a subscription to The Reveal _and_ make us record an audio commentary for the film of your choice.

For the night crowd.

Special Offer: Subscribe to The Reveal and Make Us Record the Audio Commentary of Your Choice Save big and help us choose our next Watch Along with The Reveal audio commentary selection.

One fun subscriber-only feature at The Reveal: @scotttobias.bsky.social have been recording full-length audio commentaries for some of our favorite films. We're letting our subscribers choose our next movie and we've got a BIG sale on. It's a great time to become a subscriber and tell us what to do:

It was such an honor to join Keith in getting to talk about my oft-maligned giant ape son, KING KONG (1976). Do yourself a favor and listen to our discussion today!

'King Kong' (1976) with BJ Colangelo A season dedicated to giant monster movies concludes with the return of the king: King Kong (the seventies version)

Today at The Reveal: It's a new episode of The Laser Age. @bjcolangelo.bsky.social joins me to talk about the big guy, King Kong, and his 1976 return to New York.

Special Offer: Subscribe to The Reveal and Make Us Record the Audio Commentary of Your Choice Save big and help us choose our next Watch Along with The Reveal audio commentary selection.

One fun subscriber-only feature at The Reveal: @scotttobias.bsky.social have been recording full-length audio commentaries for some of our favorite films. We're letting our subscribers choose our next movie and we've got a BIG sale on. It's a great time to become a subscriber and tell us what to do:

Time for some pedantry. Actually…

In Review: ‘Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,’ ‘Normal,’ ‘Blue Heron’ Mummies, guns, and troubling memories: This week's new releases have it all.

Review day at The Reveal includes me on Some Guy You Had To Look Up on IMDb's The Mummy and Sophy Romvari's clever and sneakily devastating Blue Heron. Also, @kphipps3000.bsky.social is having a Normal one. thereveal.film/in-review-le...

In Review: ‘Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,’ ‘Normal,’ ‘Blue Heron’ Mummies, guns, and troubling memories: This week's new releases have it all.

Today at The Reveal: I have some thoughts on NORMAL while @scotttobias.bsky.social reviews LEE CRONIN'S THE MUMMY and (Sophy Romvari's) BLUE HERON.

Castle’s book also contains a reference to a letter in which Kubrick offered his sole recorded opinion of Waterloo: “such a silly film.” To be fair, Kubrick seems not to have cared for any film about Napoleon, but it’s not like he was in the minority when it came to Waterloo. A sweeping retelling of the battle that ended Napoleon’s Hundred Days, the period after which he escaped from his exile on Elba and regained control of France only to be stopped by the British and Prussian forces, Waterloo was a failure that helped chill any interest in similar projects. Like The Brotherhood, the flop 1968 gangster picture that nearly caused Paramount to shy away from making The Godfather, Waterloo is now remembered mostly as a footnote in another movie’s story, albeit one in which said movie never got produced instead of being released to great success and acclaimed as one of the greatest films ever made. But does the film that the New York Times’ Roger Greenspun called simply “a very bad movie” deserve its lousy reputation?

OK, cool. I might miss the curation! That might lead me to double dip down the line.

Help me out, those who know: If I subscribe to AMC+ there's no real reason to have a separate Shudder subscription, right? (I don't want to lose Shudder but I do want to pick up some shows on AMC+.)

‘Waterloo’: The Film That (Maybe) Defeated Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Napoleon’ Stanley Kubrick really wanted to make a biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte as his follow-up to '2001: A Space Odyssey.' And he might have gotten away with it if it weren't for this meddling film.

For The Reveal I wrote about WATERLOO, the 1970 film whose failure maybe (probably?) led to the cancellation of Stanley Kubrick's NAPOLEON and maybe (probably?) led him to make BARRY LYNDON instead:

I'm continually baffled by the conceptual drift and sketchy continuity of those ads.

My phone corrected "THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU" to "THE MANDALORIAN AND GEOFF" and now I'm wondering what that would look like.

It played at the Music Box but I missed that, sadly.

Apple TV’s Outcome: Testing the Limits of Keanu’s Likability Podcast Episode · Filmspotting · April 14 · 1h 37m

Here is the first new Filmspotting: SVU in eight years, with a review of Outcome, streaming recommendations on numerous platforms, a game I invented involving Letterboxd stats, and a surprisingly lengthy discussion of astronaut bathroom etiquette.

No IMAX screening of SPEED RACER in Chicago, why?

It's great! But, yeah, that definitely reflects a lot of the 1975 response to the movie. It's also possible that MAD saw an easy wordplay opportunity and went for it. But MAD would never, right?

Screenshot from article: Keith: As with every film Stanley Kubrick made after Dr. Strangelove, Barry Lyndon had to pass through a gauntlet of distaste and suspicion on its way to becoming widely acknowledged as a masterpiece. As I often do, I turned to newspapers.com to see how the film was received at the time. The first review I found was a positive Chicago Tribune review from Gene Siskel that gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four but opened not with praise but a defense: There’s been a lot of bad-mouthing of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, a three-hour Victorian novel of a movie. Friends who have seen it have found it tedious and presumptuous. They’ve acknowledged its beauty while cursing its emptiness. I wonder if I saw the same film.

#45 (tie): ‘Barry Lyndon’: The Reveal discusses all 100 of Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time A journey through Sight and Sound's 100 best movies of all time arrives at Stanley Kubrick's story of a rascal's rise and fall, set in the heart of the 18th century .

Today at The Reveal: @scotttobias.bsky.social and I talk about BARRY LYNDON, what Kubrick was up to, whether Ryan O'Neal's performance is a problem or an asset, and more:

#45 (tie): ‘Barry Lyndon’: The Reveal discusses all 100 of Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time A journey through Sight and Sound's 100 best movies of all time arrives at Stanley Kubrick's story of a rascal's rise and fall, set in the heart of the 18th century .

In our latest Sight and Sound 100 conversation on The Reveal, @kphipps3000.bsky.social and I talk about BARRY LYNDON, one of the most beautiful films ever made and one of Stanley Kubrick's very best: thereveal.film/45-tie-barry...

Table of contents marking the beginning of Poison River and the appearance of Flies on the Ceiling.

That point in the Love and Rockets re-read where it’s best to pause for a breath because things are about to get dark.

Chat request from “Keenu Reeves”

I don’t easily get star struck but…

Individual tickets and festival passes are now on sale for the 13th Chicago Critics Film Festival, May 1-7, 2026 at @musicboxtheatre.bsky.social!

Get yours now: musicboxtheatre.com/series-and-f...