Verbal Diorama

(From the Archive) Back to the Future

Great scott! Where we’re going, we don’t need roads, and if my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you're going to get the history and legacy

Chicago

Long before Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly had names, they had mugshots. In 1924, Chicago tabloids were consumed by Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, two unrelated women tried

Tropic Thunder

In 2008, Ben Stiller made a war movie about people making a war movie, and in doing so, accidentally made one of the more prescient satires of 21st-century Hollywood ego,

Pulp Fiction

In 1994, a former video store clerk turned indie provocateur rearranged the crime film and, in the process, rearranged Hollywood itself. Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino

The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption is now the highest-rated film on IMDb's Top 250, a fixture of cable rotation, and shorthand for cinematic hope itself. But in 1994, it was a box

Empire Records

Empire Records is like that one friend who everyone loves but didn't quite fit in with the popular crowd. It captured the essence of 90s youth culture, from the angst of

Star Wars (Episode IV – A New Hope) (1977)

Star Wars opened on May 25th, 1977, in 32 American cinemas. The first cut had been a disaster. The director of photography and director were barely speaking. The ILM crew

Hamilton (2020)

Happy 250th birthday to the United States of America! 250 years ago, you became independent from us Brits. We're the King George III in this relationship, and we know it.

Godzilla (Gojira ゴジラ) (1954)

In the spring of 1954, a Japanese fishing vessel called the Lucky Dragon No. 5 sailed into the fallout zone of an American hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll. Its crew ca

King Kong (1933)

King Kong (1933) was the creation of Merian C. Cooper, one of Hollywood's most extraordinary and least remembered figures, and it arrived at a precise and loaded moment:

The Meg

Two decades in the making, The Meg showcases the sheer absurdity of a 75-foot prehistoric shark lurking in the ocean, and this Kaijune we acknowledge that bigger is just

Three Men and a Baby

When Three Men and a Baby opened on 25th November 1987, few could have predicted that a low-budget remake of a French comedy, shot in Toronto, starring two television act

Ever After: A Cinderella Story

Few films have done more to reimagine a fairy tale than Ever After: A Cinderella Story, Andy Tennant's 1998 period drama that stripped the magical elements from one of th

Deep Impact vs. Armageddon

In the summer of 1998, Hollywood delivered two versions of the apocalypse within eight weeks of each other, and the story of how that happened is almost as dramatic as ei

Dante's Peak vs. Volcano

In 1997, two movies decided to erupt onto cinema screens at the same time, literally and figuratively. The chaotic rivalry between Dante's Peak and Volcano is one of the

M3GAN

The final episode of AIpril, M3GAN arrived in January 2023 as a modest Blumhouse horror release, and promptly became one of the most talked-about horror comedies of the y

Her (2013)

This AIpril, what is love, if not AI persevering? Spike Jonze's Her asks that question with such sincerity and precision that it never feels like a provocation; it feel

Minority Report

In 1992, a little-known Philip K. Dick short story was optioned as a sequel to Total Recall, with Arnold Schwarzenegger set to reprise his role. After a decade of Hollywo

Short Circuit (1986)

In 1986, a clunky, tank-treaded robot, hungry for input, stole the hearts of cinema audiences worldwide. Short Circuit, the sci-fi comedy that gave us one of cinema's mos

The Hunger Games

It started with a late-night channel surf. Author Suzanne Collins, flipping between reality TV competitions and news footage from the Iraq War, watched the two blur into