As is regularly proven anew to me by my weekly rummaging through old papers to find old reviews that are theoretically worth sharing, I have carved out a privileged place for a person who still feels a compulsion to write … Continue reading And he carries the reminders of ev’ry glove that laid him down
#4 — The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940) The Philadelphia Story is all about Katharine Hepburn. More specifically, the enigma code that unlocks why The Philadelphia Story is so great begins with Hepburn as the key. In the late nineteen-thirties, Hepburn’s struggles to generate consistent mass appeal among the moviegoing public led to the coining of the persistent dismissive “box office poison” (though the term has historically hung around Hepburn’s neck, other future unquestionaed icons of the silver screen such as Fred Astaire and Mae West were name-checked in the same infamous article). As headstrong in her professional navigation as … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Four
Like a lot of people that devote themselves to inordinate amounts of time spent in movie theaters, I have a tendency to equate novelty with accomplishment. Though I maintain a thick enough strain of cynicism to avoid knee-jerk genuflection before hollow material tricked up with self-congratulatory narrative gimmicks (this is where I’d link to a review of Fight Club if I had one), I am absolutely more prone to fall for movies that do something decidedly different, filling the screen before me with something that I’ve never quite seen before. I’d naturally assumed that predilection came from an altogether commonplace impulse … Continue reading Be careful for the danger there, you just might just be unprepared
Kirstie Alley’s attitude there seems about right to me. I was thinking about typing out a lament over how much terrible fare came dribbling out during holiday movie seasons of old, but it has always been a mix of the great, fine, and dreadful at this time of the year. The very same weekend Look Who’s Talking Too arrived, so to did the magical Edward Scissorhands and the solidly entertaining Mermaids. I don’t remember a bit of this movie, but I find it a little disconcerting that I offered praise — genuine, unguarded praise at that — for the portion … Continue reading From the Archive: Look Who’s Talking Too
Happy Thanksgiving! Continue reading Happy Thanksgiffing!
The title of the new film Spotlight refers to a special investigative journalism team at The Boston Globe. Treated as a somewhat separate and fairly autonomous entity within the culture of the venerable newspaper, the reporters in the Spotlight unit take on … Continue reading You know what everything’s about, you had to have a white hot spotlight
#5 — Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) I wouldn’t necessarily term Out of the Past the best film ever made that clearly qualifies as film noir (at least one film above it on this personal tally fits squarely into that cinematic subcategory), but it is without question the work of art that I would project onto a wall to answer any questions about what makes that amazing convergence of shadow, cynicism, and fang-sharp dialogue so enthralling. It slaloms expertly around every last milestone of the form, formulating into a picture that could have been used as a template. It’s sharp … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Five
I will occasionally prepare for the release of a film adapted from a novel by reading the original source material. As a rule, I make every effort to view the resulting film as a separate entity, using my experience with … Continue reading I stand alone and watch the clock I only wait for it to stop
For this dip into the archive, I need to credit a different writer. Every episode of our radio show kicked off with a rundown of movie news, which was far more impressive back then, a time when only Entertainment Tonight and CNN’s Showbiz Today were providing that sort of information outside of the Hollywood trade publications. While we pulled an item or two from the radio station’s Associated Press wire, most of it was pulled together and written for air by my esteemed colleague on the program. He culled the material from all over the place, including, at least for … Continue reading From the Archive: “And we begin, as always, with the latest in movie news….”
Maybe there’s just a limit as to how far any individual James Bond can go. The most enduring film franchise of them all, the one that basically invented the concept of the gentle reboot as a means to greater longevity, has had a commercial and (by most assessments) artistic resurgence in recent years, ever since Daniel Craig was tapped to take on the role of Special Agent 007. There have been loud rumblings that Spectre is the last spin with Her Majesty’s Secret Service for this particular agent, and the film is heavy with finality, even without the power of … Continue reading Stop and wonder, wonder, wonder, how you got so buried under trying to feel the way you felt much younger
Coffee for Two 