REVIEW: Van Wilder [2002]

Write that down. Twenty-four years after Tim Matheson‘s Eric “Otter” Stratton fast-talked his way towards saving a fraternity in National Lampoon’s Animal House, the torch was passed onto former “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place” star Ryan Reynolds. The timing isn’t surprising since American Pie and its sequel earned box office success while bringing the gross-out antics Matheson and friends originated back to the big screen. This is why I never had an interest in watching Van Wilder despite being a Reynolds fan. It simply never seemed as…

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REVIEW: Die Hard [1988]

“Make fists with your toes” It’s become such an action classic with numerous sequels, copycats, and homages and yet Die Hard as we know it almost never was—by choice. Novelist Roderick Thorp wrote Nothing Lasts Forever, his follow-up to The Detective, thirteen years after the original because he saw The Towering Inferno and dreamt up an idea of one man in a skyscraper hunted by terrorists. It starred his NYPD Detective Joe Leland, now aged and retired, visiting his daughter’s office building in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve where he…

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REVIEW: The Breakfast Club [1985]

“You’ll get the horns” It may not be the funniest film that John Hughes crafted, but The Breakfast Club is the one that I think made the biggest impression on me. Revisiting it—so many years after its creation, as well as many since I last sat down to watch its entirety—gave me an interesting experience. How the three friends with me had never seen it is beyond me, but that fact caused something I never expected. Each moment of weight, those moments when the kids explain the pressures of each…

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