Greg Cwik
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Articles by Greg Cwik
Sam Neill: A Different Kind of Hero
He’s a paleontologist, obsessed with understanding relics of the past and unsettled by the uncertain future that kids evoke. The boy who mocks his love of dinosaurs, the boy who worships him—they all annoy him. Look at him beam, at the buoyant way he moves, when he first sees the dinosaurs resurrected, a herd of titans in their own bucolic home, impossibility munching on the leaves from the top of the trees.
Alice, Sweet Alice (1976): The Body and the Blood
"At grief so deep the tongue must wag in vain; the language of our sense and memory lacks the vocabulary of such pain." Picture a church. Pretty, peaceful. There are ghosts in the pews. Picture the candles with lovely yellow flames moving with the gentle grace of practiced dancers. Each flame represents one soul prayed for. Who prays for you? Who prays for Alice Spages? Alice, Sweet Alice (1976) begins with the inscrutable intonations of a child's voice in the hushed, solemn tone of the pious.
“Tales From the Crypt”: For Your Shivering Pleasure
Through a gate shaped like a monster, through the sea of fog enfolding a wayward old house shrouded in darkness and on its way to dilapidation, under the persistent slash of lighting, through the front door and various rooms decorated antiquatedly (surely this place must harbor ghosts), down halls and into a hidden door ushering us down a stone staircase spiraling ever deeper into the catacombs amid the cobwebs and shadows—all set to bouncing, fun-creepy music that is unmistakably the work of...
“Alien 3,” Resurrected: The Assembly Cut
The somnolent vessel drifts through the black sprawl of space bestrewn with so many stars amid all that nothingness. Inside, tucked away in placid sleep, are Ellen Ripley—who has now twice vanquished the xenomorphs—trustable Corporal Hicks, the young girl Newt, and scraps of the benevolent android Bishop. Life here exists in stasis, but not for long: Surreptitiously sneaked onboard is an intruder with long, spindly legs like fingers and acid for blood, and it’s looking for a host to have its baby.
Don’t Call Tom Noonan a Monster
How early roles in films like The Monster Squad and Manhunter established the late actor’s understated style playing the gentle, tenderhearted bad guy. “And Tom Noonan as Frankenstein.” These beautiful words adorn the screen in gothic blood-red font during the opening credits of 1987’s The Monster Squad as the camera prowls through the bowels of an old castle, whose Tartarean depths are lit only by torches affixed to stone walls, and in which lie scurrying rats and a group of coffins.
The Calm Determination of Robert Duvall
Honoring the legacy of the late acting legend by examining the quietude and utter lack of ego he brought to John Flynn’s 1973 neo-noir The Outfit. A taxi unhurriedly navigates the curves of a faded backroad under a pale wash of sky. The camera follows, pacific and easy. One guy drives; another sits, foot perched on the front seat, in the back. The scene feels innocuous, yet just a little off. The threat quickly becomes apparent as this second man, dressed like a priest, produces a gun.
Reviews - Reverse Shot
In It to Win It By Greg Cwik Send Help Dir. Sam Raimi, U.S., 20th Century Studios Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) works in a cubicle in an office full of people who don't like her, if they notice her at all. She eats tuna sandwiches and doesn’t wear makeup. She shares an apartment with a bird named Sweetie, her bookshelves are full of survival manuals, and around her tiny modest place are photos of her in nature, smile big and lustrous.
Bad taste and moral panic are the lasting legacy of Silent Night, Deadly Night
’80s slashers have a tendency for silliness, stupidity, and mean, gross violence. Many took the wrong lessons from Halloween and perpetuated them, sometimes to undeniably fun results. Silent Night, Deadly Night lacks the visual eloquence of John Carpenter, and the genius of Tom Savini’s make-up, but it does include some unsettlingly lovely images, like a topless woman (scream queen Linnea Quigley) artfully impaled on antlers, mounted on a wood-paneled wall behind Santa-clad Billy wielding his ax.
Bad taste and moral panic are the lasting legacy of Silent Night, Deadly Night
In the horror aisle, nestled between the classics and disreputable trash promising a fun night with your friends huddled before the muted television (so your parents don’t hear the shrieks), was one of the most indelible images to ever adorn a VHS cover: Santa Claus’ hand reaching up out of a snow-topped chimney, holding not a sack of presents but an ax.
“Jaws” at 50: A Distinctly American Thriller
As much as the thrills and screams, the soul of Steven Spielberg’s Fourth of July classic is its subtle social and cultural provocations that mostly still feel relevant to American life today. A while back, on a summer afternoon in NYC, with the sky big and magnanimously blue and the city doused in sun—maybe a little too hot, and the air thick with that distinctly New York humidity that only made AC more enticing—I went to see a 35mm print of Jaws.
Ghosts of Pompeii: “Pink Floyd at Pompeii-MCMLXXII”
On the periphery of Pompeii—that doomed city destroyed and preserved by an apocalyptic bombardment of volcanic ash and pumice falling from the heavens like a cruel act of comeuppance by a cranky god, sitting proud and tenacious and filled with the fresh, majestic air of antiquity—is the Amphitheater, or what remains of it.
The Edge of the Abyss: William Styron at 100
“A man is the sum of his misfortunes.” –William Faulkner * Article continues after advertisement At the nadir of a particularly bad time in my life, I was escorted to Bellevue by some friends.
Insights Into the Unknowable: Remembering David Lynch
Thursday, January 16, 2025: a man I considered eternal died. David Lynch—filmmaker, artist, musician, sound designer, cartoonist, chain-smoker, YouTuber, human—pervaded and propelled my growth as not just an insatiable fiend for popular culture, but my maturation as a human. If that sounds hyperbolic, I assure you it’s not. His influence on me—and on all who have experienced him, all who are willing to give in to the indelible beauty which is unique to him—is that profound, that inimitable.
With two low-budget horror movies, Bob Clark captured the anxieties of 1974
In 1974—the year Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of Watergate, and just one year after the United States withdrew from the Vietnam War, having wasted 19 years, five months, four weeks, one day, and nearly 60,000 American lives—confidence in and trust of the United States government was in a shambles. Facing failure for what many perceived to be the first time, average Joe Americans found their spirits wavering, like a shed of rotting wood about to suffer a storm.
Life After Cancellation: “Eerie, Indiana”
Aided by creative consultant Joe Dante, NBC’s single-season sci-fi/horror series offered the same philosophical phantasmagoria and small-town charm of Twin Peaks to much younger viewers. “...but small towns have long memories and pass their horrors down ceremonially from generation to generation.” — Stephen King, Salem’s Lot In recent years, children’s TV has grown creatively etiolated.
Death in a Small Town On the Small Screen
In 1974, Tobe Hooper and a young, mostly neophyte crew went off into the sun-scorched and scoriated rurality of Texas to film what would become one of the most important movies in the annals of world cinema: The Texas Chain Saw (two words) Massacre. Almost unbearably intense and waggishly deranged, it is the story of a coterie of young people who befall a family of dirt-mottled cannibals residing in a ramshackle home whose bland white exterior belies the horrors skulking within.
Unimpeachable, Daring, Perfectly Weird: The Case for Brad Dourif
Brad Dourif, known for his madman characters and many cinematic iniquities, is, it’s easy to forget, capable of staggering eclecticism. His career, unimpeachable, daring, perfectly weird, is based on an non-judgmental approach. He’s taken the shape of men both strange and normal, believable and absurd, painfully human and grotesque, resulting in a diverse array of eccentric and down-to-earth performances that are histrionic and subtle, heroes and villains, lucid and lunatic, scary and scared.
Finian's Rainbow — Francis Ford Coppola | In Review Online
Published as part of Francis Ford Coppola: As Big As Possible. 1968Coppola RetroFrancis Ford CoppolaWarner Bros. Pictures We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences on repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
A Century of Norman Mailer: A Man Who Became His Own Most Enduring Character
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Smarter Than You Think? On the Literary Side of Friends
“Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.” –Harold Bloom * Article continues after advertisement When you think of Friends, the perennial favorite of young people since 1994, an eternal bastion of comfort for innumerable viewers for thirty years now, living in perpetuity on network television and streaming, you think, probably, of sarcasm-laced banter in living rooms and coffee houses, Clinton-era network TV...
Folie à Woo: The Tumult and Power of Male Friendship in the Films of John Woo
With his American remake of his own 1989 action classic The Killer hitting streaming this weekend, we look back on the only theme more prominent than excessive bloodshed in the director’s dense filmography.
The Sordid Secrets of “Presumed Innocent”
In the 1990 film Presumed Innocent, Harrison Ford’s Rusty Sabich is an ethical Assistant District Attorney—one of those rare genuine good guys just trying his best to do the right thing, to use his power to improve the world, a family man with eyes heavy from the weight of life and the horrible things that can happen in it—and he’s been accused of murdering a female colleague.
“Peeping Tom”: The Masterpiece That Killed Michael Powell’s Career
Newly restored by Criterion, the 1960 psychological thriller has taken on a life of its own after serving the role of Psycho’s black-sheep sibling upon its initial release. Mark (Carl Boehn), the subject of 1960’s Peeping Tom, photographs women for his profession, as well as for his hobby. He’s a foreigner who’s off in a way you can’t quite articulate: Is it his accent? The awkward look of discomfort tugging slightly at his mouth, eyes ashine with secrets?
Life After Cancellation: “Crime Story”
“Life After Cancellation” is an ongoing column examining TV series that were removed from the air after a season or two, which have taken on new life on streaming (licitly or otherwise)—for better or for worse. Find more of the column’s articles here. Miami Vice, a stylish cop show steeped in pastels and thrumming with the bass-and-synth sounds of ’80s pop music, is the coolest TV show ever made.
A Classic Rises from the Ashes
José Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of Night is a monument of vulgarity and erudition, perfused by an eerie air of alluring, unsettling ambiguity. An intensely oneiric work, it was originally published in 1970 and is now being released in a new unabridged translation by Megan McDowell for New Directions that constitutes a major literary event. (McDowell revised the Hardie St. Martin and Leonard Mades translation that was published by Alfred A.
The Many Mad, Violent Men of William Friedkin
With the late New Hollywood provocateur’s films populating the Criterion Channel’s April lineup, we investigate the inexhaustible theme that ties The Exorcist and Sorcerer to Cruising and Jade. Of all the auteurs and iconoclasts to emerge from the New Hollywood era, no one made movies quite as mad as William Friedkin. He wasn’t a romantic, like Coppola with his lyrical Catholic imagery and spiritual opulence, and he didn’t set scenes of murder to The Rolling Stones.
Cops and Kids: The Charm of “Kindergarten Cop”
Inexplicably and wonderfully re-released in 4K by Kino Lorber, the 1990 family comedy (and dramatic role change for its star) is endlessly charming entertainment. “Boys have a penis.
Jodie Foster Is Brilliant in the Chilly and Chilling “True Detective: Night Country”
Far from a return to form, the HBO series’ fourth season still lives up to the expectations set by its inexplicable first.
5 must-watch Columbo episodes with great guest villains Original
Lieutenant Columbo, played with average Joe charm and unshowy, easy-to-miss dexterity by Peter Falk, is more than meets the eye — to the bad guys, not us, because we know how things will turn out. They look at him, at the way he putters about with his brows furrowed beneath an unkempt thatch of graying hair and a cockeyed bit of mouth, and they don’t see anything formidable. He looks like a nobody, just another schlub. And then, the moment comes, as it always does: the humble revelation.
Mr. Monk's Last Case — Randy Zisk | In Review Online
Credit: Steve Wilkie/Peacock It’s 2023: Streaming has become the dominant form of mass culture consumption, handheld Internet access is ubiquitous, the rich have gained total hegemony over American society, and super sleuth and world-class neurotic Adrian Monk (the inimitable Tony Shalhoub) is considering suicide. After solving his wife Trudy’s murder — it was Craig T.
The Deceptive Introspection of David Fincher’s “The Killer”
“In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.” — John Barth David Fincher’s The Killer is a film of superficial sublimity and narrative simplicity, a real letdown from the director of Se7en and Zodiac—or, rather, it is ostensibly these things.
Matthew Perry’s Chandler performance set the tone for his unique pathos Original
Photo: Gary Null/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images Norm Macdonald, that mordant rapscallion, once relayed a story about Matthew Perry saying that he had invented a new kind of comedy with Chandler Bing; Macdonald, in that wily way of his, responded: “You invented sarcasm?” Funny as Macdonald’s retort was, Perry’s claim wasn’t wholly without merit. It isn’t the incessant sarcasm that makes Perry’s performance special in the annals of American sitcoms, though.
Mommie Dearest: On the Mother/Daughter Relationship at the Heart of “Carrie”
It begins with an overhead view: a gaze too modest to be that of God, but still from above so that we’re looking down at a young girl in that very-’70s style of garb, shorts tugged high. We slowly, dramatically approach her; we expect inevitability. Then there’s the awkward flailing of lanky pale arms as she misses the volleyball, the inflated orb bouncing insolently along the asphalt out of frame, and the other girls are livid. “You eat shit,” the boss of the mean girls (Nancy Allen) spits at her.
Crisis of faith: The Exorcist at 50
About Little White Lies Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies. Editorial Design
With Last Action Hero and Demolition Man, 1993 was the best year for action movie heroes Original
In the 1980s, that epoch of excess and bloat, in a country run by knaves in suits ravenous for money, Hollywood’s heroes were big and brawny, meaty hunks of alpha male masculinity with bulging biceps and abs like armor toting ridiculously big guns and kicking copious amounts of ass — you know, real American stuff.
With Last Action Hero and Demolition Man, 1993 was the year beefcake got brainy
3 days ago On his fifty-fourth birthday, in 2018, Alvin Dedeaux and his wife took a celebratory float trip on the Lower Colorado River south of Austin, Texas, intending to pick up a bit of trash along the way. A former lead singer for the Texas funk band Bad Mutha Goose & the Brothers Grimm, Dedeaux had spent …
That Night At Alcatraz
“It is discouraging to leave the past behind only to see it coming toward you like the thunderstorm which drenched you yesterday.” —William Gass “You’re a very bad man, Walker, a very destructive man,” says the redoubtable Carroll O’Connor, with the impetuousness of a hypochondriac—the desperation of the doomed—to Lee Marvin’s cryptic cipher, a mononymous, six-foot fist of a man slinging a hand cannon and garbed in stylish attire that always matches his surroundings.
King on Screen — Daphné Baiwir | In Review Online
Since I was a boy, gaunt and ghoulish, raised on the children’s renditions of Edgar Allan Poe and those silly Goosebumps books, I’ve been obsessed with Stephen King, the most reliable marquee-name author of the last half-century, who lives in perpetuity atop the Bestseller lists and entombed deep in the subconscious of anyone who’s ever been afraid of clowns or felt like the awkward kid in high school or been to a forlorn hotel in the vast snowy isolation of a mountain resort.
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“The Fugitive” at 30
As moviegoers today are smothered with an endless torrent of computer-spawned apocalyptic action, something this intimately human is a breath of fresh air.
Tom Cruise Is Our Great Physical Performer
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One reminds us which movie stars Cruise feels most descendent from: Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Jackie Chan. Tom Cruise, that wonderful wacko, short in stature yet grand in personality, taunts death for our entertainment.
Tom Cruise Is Our Great Physical Performer
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One reminds us which movie stars Cruise feels most descendent from: Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Jackie Chan. Tom Cruise, that wonderful wacko, short in stature yet grand in personality, taunts death for our entertainment.
Our Guy: Celebrating Michael J. Fox
Our Guy: Celebrating Michael J. Fox By Greg Cwik Michael J. Fox will receive a lifetime achievement award from Museum of the Moving Image at their 2023 Spring Gala on June 6, 2023. There are all kinds of actors: those who disappear, as they say, and in their place summon a living, breathing, bleeding, quivering human character.
Mother! Oh God, Mother! “Psycho II” at 40
More scandalous than a flushing toilet, Richard Franklin’s intelligently written 1983 sequel to the Hitchcock horror classic never succumbs to the clichés its forebear established. “We’re all not quite as sane as we pretend to be.” — Robert Bloch I won’t play the righteous contrarian here: Psycho II is not as good as the original. After all, few films are. Why bother trying? It’s a Sisyphean endeavor, and will more than likely provoke fury in the chests of the moviegoers they want to attract.
The Tragedy of “Barry”
Eulogizing Bill Hader’s black comedy series, one of the most achingly human shows of the post-Sopranos era.
“Evil Dead Rise” Has No Soul to Swallow
Despite the occasional flash of creativity, the latest installment in the Evil Dead franchise is a drab and self-serious outlier within Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell’s eccentric series. In the late-’70s, a cadre of ambitious young film freaks set off into the dark depths of the woods, into an endless enmeshment of gnarled branches and twisted trunks blotting out the sun, and piles of dead and desiccated leaves like dead bodies littering a battlefield, to make a movie.
Total Recall — Paul Verhoeven | In Review Online
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” – Philip K.
Unsettled Souls and Compelling Authenticity: Remembering Tom Sizemore
The character actor with memorable roles in Saving Private Ryan, Natural Born Killers, and Heat passed away last week at 61. My cousin—a kind but sometimes splenetic man stricken with his irremediable vices and maladies—died at the age of 39 from a fentanyl overdose in his tiny room in my grandma’s attic a few years back. He was never a voracious reader or connoisseur of culture, and his film-watching habits were primarily based on what was streaming on Netflix.
Children of the Corn — Kurt Wimmer | In Review Online
Kurt Wimmer’s mirthfully overwrought Children of the Corn, a revamp of one of horror’s longest and least-consequential franchises, is more fun than it should be. It’s not a good movie — did you expect it to be? — but Wimmer, who wrote and directed, carves up a breezy, playfully lurid, never boring slab of sinister silliness, a welcome reprieve from the surfeit of dour, trauma-obsessed horror films that A24 produces and has inspired, selling self-seriousness as art.
Hard Boiled — John Woo | In Review Online
For this writer, a personal cinematic pet peeve is when characters fire guns only for the bullets to seem to dissipate, never hitting anything. John Woo is, perhaps more than any other filmmaker from his generation, aware that bullets destroy shit. Every time a gun goes off, walls erupt, windows explode, bodies are ripped up and go flying — ridiculous, yes, but there’s a weight here, a sense of gravity, of consequence.
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