HBO (now Max) has been producing its own feature-length films since 1982, averaging 10-15 releases each year. Most of these films have little to no marketing behind them, nor are they distributed by a major studio or star A-list actors. With very few exceptions, these films go mostly unseen. However, there have been exceptions. These include The Normal Heart, Bad Education, Live from Baghdad, and Behind The Candelabra. Perhaps HBO’s most celebrated and widely received original movie is the Billy Crystal-directed (Forget Paris, Mr. Saturday Night) 61*, chronicling the 1961 single-season home run chase between New York Yankees teammates Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.
Category Archives: Based on True Events
Napoleon (2023)
Gladiator, The Last Duel, Blade Runner, or Alien, it is not. Ridley Scott’s Napoleon was my most anticipated movie of 2023. The elements were in place. It had the director. It had the actor (Joaquin Phoenix – Walk the Line, Joker). It had the story. Yet, the pieces never came together. Instead, it was a two-hour and 38-minute chaotic mess that offered no logical transition of scenes, little connection between characters, and easily forgettable battle scenes that left much to be desired. This film was a catastrophic failure in many ways.
The Kill Team (2019)
Alexander Skarsgard has quietly carved out a niche as one of the top sinister bad guys of his generation. Whether it be the homicidal Viking in The Northman, the psychopathic tech CEO in HBO’s transcending drama Succession, the abusive antagonist in HBO’s beloved Big Little Lies, the lead sexual assaulter/terrorizer in the underrated remake of Straw Dogs, or the charming and soft-spoken, yet sadistic and narcissistic sergeant in Dan Krauss’s The Kill Team, a fictionalized version of the killings of unarmed Afghan civilians carried out by US soldiers in the Maywand District in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan in 2010.