Carpenter's Tools: Escape from L.A.

[Note: This is a stupefyingly belated entry in my John Carpenter retrospective, which I intended to go all the way through his canon but cou...

Carpenter's Tools: Big Trouble in Little China

By the time John Carpenter made Big Trouble in Little China , the most successful independent filmmaker of all time had since acclimated int...

Carpenter's Tools: The Thing

I seem to admit my ignorance with film theory and (somewhat) history quite often in my reviews, which probably isn't too smart, but I do...

Carpenter's Tools: Escape From New York

I still can't believe how well I responded to Halloween , but for my money Carpenter hit his stride in the '80s. After the fun but s...

Grindhouse

For whatever reason, I never caught "Grindhouse" in theaters. Perhaps it's my aversion to horror (read: childlike whimpering f...