Happy Thanksgiffing!
Happy Thanksgiving! Continue reading Happy Thanksgiffing!
Category: Film
You know what everything’s about, you had to have a white hot spotlight
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
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Five
#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 stand alone and watch the clock I only wait for it to stop
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
From the Archive: “And we begin, as always, with the latest in movie news….”
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….”
Stop and wonder, wonder, wonder, how you got so buried under trying to feel the way you felt much younger
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
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Six
#6 — Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941) This particular fifty film list should make it abundantly clear that I have a pronounced appreciation for the singular cinematic voice of writer-director Preston Sturges. I’d argue that no other filmmaker quite pulls together his collection of traits on the same piquant combo. Billy Wilder probably comes closest, with his mixture of bleakly brilliant comic cynicism and fundamental decency. Yet Wilder doesn’t have the same propensity for pointed social commentary nor a similar weakness for daffy pratfalls, presented not to deviously undercut the more serious subtext but for the far simpler reason that Sturges … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Six
Baker, Baumbach, Endfield, Hall and Williams, Jacobs
Big Hero 6 (Don Hall and Chris Williams, 2014). Like just about everyone else, I believe The Lego Movie should have been Best Animated Feature Academy Award nominee (and I appreciate the creators’ inspired cheeky resilience in the face of the snub). After seeing Big Hero 6, though, I’m not sure naming the most worthy victor in the category was quite as simple as the chagrined consensus suggested. Developed after Disney Studios rummaged through the big trunk of misfit concepts stored up by their acquisition Marvel, the computer animated film about a young robotics genius who responds to personal hardship … Continue reading Baker, Baumbach, Endfield, Hall and Williams, Jacobs
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Seven
#7 — The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940) I stand by my longtime belief that John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is the tome most deserving of the well-worn honorific The Great American Novel. The appeal of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the default choice, is completely understandable given the way it weighs the toxicity of craving upper mobility along with the hollowness of wealth itself, but I find the gut-punch grimness of Steinbeck’s story to hold greater, more resonant truths. Gatsby has added layers, which tickles the inner intellect of literature aesthetes. The Grapes of Wrath gets … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Seven
From the Archive: Run
One of the main reasons I could never take the concept of Patrick Dempsey as “McDreamy” seriously is that I remember all too well when he was a young actor in terrible movies, many of which oddly featured him seducing older women. I don’t remember a bit of Run, beyond lumping it into the big, vague category of Indistinct Junk We Used To Need To See In Order To Fill Out A Weekly Radio Show. Here’s yet another in the brief procession of reviews that needed to employ the nonsense word “thrill-omedy.” I notice I did a terrible job keeping my … Continue reading From the Archive: Run
Coffee for Two 