Rich man’s Stand By Me: I’ve never loved the classic 1986 coming-of-age drama, but I think that’s because I saw it too late. By the time I got to it, its cinema had become dated. Son of Rambow takes all the heart of Stand By Me and gives it a badly needed fresh coat of paint. This week […]

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Poor Man’s American Graffiti: Diner feels remarkably familiar all the way through. It’s a pretty classic coming-of-age story that has elements similar to The Graduate, Stand By Me, and the first half of The Deer Hunter. American Graffiti also has these elements, but it also has Harrison Ford. ★★★☆☆ Ok, let’s address something here before we […]

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Rich man’s 500 Days of Summer: This is love story at heart. It just happens that Joaquin Phoenix is dating his laptop. Every year I watch about 60 movies that I’ve never seen before. About 15 of those movies are new releases. These 15 movies usually break out like this: top Oscar movies (last year […]

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Rich Man’s Rebel Without A Cause: I love both of these movies, and they’re both 5 stars in my book. But Francois Truffaut’s 400 Blows seems to have aged better, so I’m giving the gold to 400 and James Dean will have to be content with silver. ★★★★★ Like The Outsiders or Rebel Without A […]

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Poor Man’s Airplane: Hear me out here. Deadpool is clearly a satire on the comic book genre. From what I understand, the character has always been a satire. Airplane did the same thing for disaster movies back in the seventies, they just did it better. ★★★☆☆ Around the time that Ant-Man came out, I swore […]

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Rich Man’s The Verdict: Both of these movies are character studies about lawyers, but I really enjoyed Paul Giamatti’s portrayal in this film. ★★★★☆ Win Win is a fine little movie by director/writer Tom McCarthy, known for last year’s Best Picture winner Spotlight.. Starring Paul Giamatti (tons of shit), Amy Ryan (The Office) as his […]

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Poor man’s Fast Times At Ridgemont High: I don’t love Fast Times. I like Better Off Dead even less. I can’t figure out why this movie exists. ★★☆☆☆ I understand why Josh assigned me this movie. It’s the same reason that I assigned Animal House. He thinks it’s a really funny movie. Unfortunately, Animal House […]

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  Intro from the Editor: I didn’t so much assign this movie to David as text him and Josh rapturously about it: Holy shit have you guys seen M? It’s amazing. I’d wanted to see M for a long time. I knew its plot: criminal underbelly begins hunt for a child-killer. I knew its marquee […]

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Poor man’s Trading Places: It’s really tough to beat Trading Places, but Flirting With Disaster made a real strong go at it. It’s missing a few more laugh-out-loud lowbrow comedy moments, but otherwise it hits all the right places for a comedy. ★★★★☆ Josh and I convinced another friend to watch Flirting With Disaster before […]

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Poor Man’s Ferngully: Both movies have environmentalism at their core. However, I found Ferngully to be more fun and satisfying. ★★★☆☆ As you may remember, I did not look kindly upon The Wind Rises, but Josh is nothing if not persistent. Princess Mononoke is an animated film centered around Ashitaka, a prince from a small […]

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