Category: Film

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Five

Dan Seeger

#25 — Adam’s Rib (George Cukor, 1949) When considering classic Hollywood cinema, there exists a commonly held, wholly understandable desire to project more modern social belief systems onto certain films, celebrating them for an ahead-of-their-time embrace of, say, greater tolerance or general mindfulness. Fairly often, I suspect this is wishful thinking, an attempt to partially wipe away the decades of lamentable portrayals of, well, really anyone who wasn’t a white male. I love Duck Soup like few other films, but I get woozy with dismay every time I hear Groucho Marx deliver the joke in which “darkies” is a central part of … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Five

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Don’t say I never warned you when your train gets lost

Dan Seeger

No matter how much evidence there is to the contrary, the temptation is mighty to always ascribe cinematic authorship primarily (even solely) to the director. There’s good cause for that. Studying the filmographies of everyone from genuine artists like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese to abominable hacks like Brett Ratner and Michael Bay suggest just how much a director owns the final vision on the screen. On occasion, though, the genealogy of a film can be a little trickier than that. Trainwreck is unmistakably a Judd Apatow movie, maintaing the flavor and messiness of the director’s four prior features. But it … Continue reading Don’t say I never warned you when your train gets lost

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Six

Dan Seeger

#26 — Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948) At the midpoint of this particular countdown, this is the fourth Howard Hawks film included. It says something significant about the director that each has belonged to a distinctly different genre. Sure, there’s a little bit of film noir blood running through both To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, but the former is a wartime drama and the latter a detective story, the shared pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall making them seem more similar than they really are. The other film covered thus far, His Girl Friday, can make a … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Six

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From the Archive: Knocked Up

Dan Seeger

Now seems an opportune time to retrieve one of the old reviews of a Judd Apatow film that I wrote for an online site, but not this one. My original plan was to post my take on The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which I remember as one of my first stabs at reviving my film criticism for the brave new digital age. It was, but there’s barely anything to the review. It not’s even worth a hyperlink. By the time Apatow’s sophomore directorial effort arrived, I was more clearly back in the realm of full-length reviews.  If you want to understand why writer-director … Continue reading From the Archive: Knocked Up

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Seven

Dan Seeger

#27 — To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944) Lauren Bacall was nineteen years old when she made her film debut in To Have and Have Not. Famously spotted on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar by Nancy Keith, the wife of director Harold Hawks, Bacall was given the role of Marie Browning. Nicknamed Slim, just like Keith, the character was a singer in a bar, spotted by Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart), the captain of a small chartered fishing boat. More importantly, Slim was designed to provide the formidable match for the film’s leading man. As Hawks explained to Bogart, “You … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Seven

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Some are dying slowly, some are dying fast, some of us hold on to life as long as we can last

Dan Seeger

In Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, the “Me” is Greg (Thomas Mann), a high school senior who has successfully navigated the perils of that particular treacherous habitat by expertly positioning himself as innocuously forgettable. As he explains in listing the various cliques that exist in his school, he’s managed to make himself a casually likable acquaintance to everyone. That is, he stays on the safe periphery to everyone except Earl (Ronald Cyler II), someone he’s known since kindergarten and who he refers to as a co-worker, due the dozens of silly amateur films they’ve directed together. Greg’s precarious equilibrium … Continue reading Some are dying slowly, some are dying fast, some of us hold on to life as long as we can last

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From the Archive: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Dan Seeger

I find it a little dismaying that I can reach back twenty-five years to find reviews that are incredibly pertinent to new blockbuster-wannabe releases. James Cameron attests that the latest stab at perpetuating the franchise, Terminator: Genisys, is the true follow-up to his own final cinematic word the adventures of Sarah Connor and the cyborg assassin from the future. (I’m pretty sure he also once maintained that the theme park attraction he helped direct is also canon.) I don’t blame him for disavowing the other movies, but I know at least a couple people who would argue vehemently (preferably over beers) … Continue reading From the Archive: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Eight

Dan Seeger

#28 — Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946) It seems Notorious began with a desire on the part of director Alfred Hitchock to cast Ingrid Bergman as a woman involved in deceits and duplicitous machinations at the highest levels. This inkling would have come to him at right around the time Bergman was collecting accolades and a bright, shiny Academy Award for her work in Gaslight and as he was on the cusp of working with the actress on Spellbound, a film similarly preoccupied with the way madness can infiltrate as person’s psyche, including through the manipulations of others. Whether or not Hitchcock … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Eight

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Garland, Howard, Mangold, Ross, Taylor

Dan Seeger

Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015). Novelist and screenwriter Garland makes his directorial debut with this smart, chilly science fiction film about a reclusive tech magnate (Oscar Isaac) who flies up an employee (Domhnall Gleeson), supposedly selected at random, to help him test out some remarkable new artificial intelligence he’s created. Complicating the test subjects reactions is the little detail that the A.I. has been loaded into an android with a notably lovely female form and visage (Alicia Vikander). Garland builds his script with almost malicious psychological cunning, fomenting uncertainty as to whether the genius inventor is a simmering madman or … Continue reading Garland, Howard, Mangold, Ross, Taylor