Johann Koehler

This month’s reviews of great movie remakes draws to a close with the film that finally brought Al Pacino and Robert De Niro together, face to face. It’s Michael Mann’s remake of his own TV Movie LA Takedown, which six years later became Heat (1995). A heist organized by a slick team of gangsters goes […]

For the third installment of this month’s series of movie recommendations based on remakes, I wanted to do a Western. The obvious choice would be John Sturges’ Magnificent Seven, which is magnificent and often considered one of the top remake films of all time (source material: Seven Samurai). But I couldn’t pass up the opportunity […]

The second instalment of this month’s series of movie recommendations is sure to set your skin crawling. The theme of the series is ‘remakes,’ and with this film, be warned: it is not for the faint of heart. It took me two efforts before I could bring myself to watch it through to the end! […]

Because Keith is both kind and suffering from a (hopefully temporary) bout of impaired judgment, he let me deceive him into giving me free rein to write the movie recommendations for the month of June. I get to write a series of reviews along a common theme, and I’ve picked… remakes! Be warned: recommending the […]

I confess I’m not as much of a fan of The IT Crowd, the show for which this week’s movie recommendation director is most widely known. In fact, before Richard Ayoade became cult-pop’s darling by acting in front of the camera, he was busy crafting a name for himself directing movie shorts and music videos […]

Tullymore is a quiet, bucolic village in rural Ireland. The pub owner is also the banker and accountant; the grocery store doubles as the post office; whatever drama typically occupies the day is, by any other standards, decidedly mundane. It’s the perfect setting for a big event to disrupt the contented routines of its 52 […]

After finishing Fawlty Towers, John Cleese set to making a string of feature-length comedies, each with varying degrees of success. This week’s movie recommendation is the finest of those efforts, for which he earned an Academy Award for his screenplay co-written with Charles Crichton: A Fish Called Wanda (1988). A gang of four criminals pulls […]

C’est l’histoire d’un homme qui tombe d’un immeuble de cinquante étages. Le mec, au fur et à mesure de sa chute se répète sans cesse pour se rassurer : jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien. Mais l’important c’est pas la chute, c’est l’atterrissage. This week’s film recommendation is often […]

Before Kathryn Bigelow became one of Hollywood’s hot tickets for films like The Hurt Locker (2008), and before her public spat with James Cameron, she turned out some fairly unknown but enjoyable films like Point Break (1991) and this week’s movie recommendation, Strange Days (1995). The film is set in a deteriorating L.A., in the […]