Living for the Cinema Geoff Gershon

Welcome to the Living for the Max series. Over the past 45 years, there has been no other film franchise QUITE as inventive nor as consistently exciting as The Mad Max Saga….four films mostly chronicling the post-apocalyptic adventures of lone wolf Max Roxatansky played three times by Mel Gibson and most recently by Tom Hardy. As each film has been directed by Australian cinematic genius George Miller, they have each reflected his unique vision while also being HUGELY influential ...

"The Magic Is Back!"That was the official tagline in the marketing for this highly anticipated sequel to '87's Lethal Weapon when it was first being released just under thirty-five years ago. We were rejoining the story of two very different Los Angeles cops who became friends at the end of the previous film....wild-haired, suicidal widower Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) and slowly retiring family man Roger Murtagh (Danny Glover). At a time when the buddy cop action film was a fairly ...

COPPOLA WEEK continues! Fifty years ago sandwiched between his two multiple Oscar-winning masterpieces of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Francis Ford Coppola finally had studio support to write and direct this passion project which he had been working on since the mid '60's. The story focuses on Harry - a surveillance expert played by Oscar-winner Gene Hackman - who has recorded a mysterious tape of a couple he was assigned to "bug" and hears something concerning on it w...

In time for its upcoming 45th Anniversary, Memorial Day AND the recent resurgence of its Oscar-winning director screening his long-developed passion project (Megalopolis....hopefully coming out later this year), what better time to revisit a film which itself was a long-gestating passion project for Francis Ford Coppola? All of the crazy stories behind its troubled projection have seemingly been remembered as much as the film itself but make no mistake, this Vietnam/Cambodia-set war dra...

It's time to return of the most beloved and longest running franchises in cinema, the ongoing chronicles of an alternative timeline in Earth's history when humanity destroyed itself and the apes took over our planet, originally starting with the 1968 classic Planet of the Apes starring Charlton Heston. Coming out seven years after the last entry (War of the Planet of the Apes) which closed out a highly popular and acclaimed trilogy films focusing on the primate protagonist known as Caes...

What happens when you combine the directing trio (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker) behind the spoof smash Airplane , the on-screen debut of one of the beloved movie stars of his generation (Val Kilmer), one of the most acclaimed actors/movie stars of HIS generation (Omar Shariff), satire focusing on World War II spy dramas, musical numbers satirizing Elvis road comedies, one underwater Western saloon fight, AND one extended sequence playing on misperceptions of the Swedish language??...