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Empire Magazine Greatest Movies List - #319: Midnight Run

Buddy comedies are the result of a good equation. You need two vastly different characters who have to work together, (most of the time against their will), good dialogue and great onscreen chemistry. In the 1980s and 1990s the prime example was Mel Gibson and Danny Glover as two cops in the “Lethal Weapon” franchise, but “Midnight Run” (1988) by Martin Brest achieves the formula just as well, not with cops but with a bounty hunter and his prey. Robert De Niro plays the tough bounty hunter while Charles Grodin is the embezzler he must bring from New York to Los Angeles. That is of course if they survive the trip and each other. I first started watching this movie at a birthday party in Santiago, Chile, back in the mid-90s. I don’t know whose idea that was but it was a weird choice because people started walking out of the room pretty soon. I guess it was a bit too much of a grown up movie for a bunch of ten-year-olds, but I kept it in mind and over the years I rediscovered by re...

Empire Magazine Greatest Movies List - #319: The Lion King

Disney’s “The Lion King” (1994), directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, is two spots ahead of “Aladdin” on Empire Magazine greatest movies list. It makes sense since   it has once again all the elements of the classic Disney animated movies: great hand-drawn animation, themes of good versus evil, comedy sidekicks, cute animals, musical numbers and father issues. The story line in “The Lion King” actually tries to be a bit deeper by borrowing elements from “Hamlet.” If you are going to have a Shakespearean villain, you might as well have him voiced by Jeremy Irons. Since Disney has always been keen to market its product on every platform as soon as possible, the first I saw of this movie was in an illustrated book before the movie itself even came out. Then after watching the actual movie of course my brother and I ended up renting the game for Super Nintendo and my parents bought the soundtrack on audio cassette. These marketing guys really know their thing. Since I was t...