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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Fourteen

Dan Seeger

#14 — Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944) By the time I was paying attention, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” was a holiday standard. The song, written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, has been recorded countless times, usually presented as a sentimental ode to the joys of of the Christmas season, the tender melody imbued with sedate good cheer. That’s partially attributable to finessing done to the lyrics over the year, but I still found it remarkable, even jarring, when I first experienced the song in its original context, as one of the numbers in the movie musical … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Fourteen

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‘Cause when life looks like Easy Street there is danger at your door

Dan Seeger

Uncle John feels like a first feature. In this instance, I mean that as a compliment. The directorial debut of Steven Piet (who co-wrote the screenplay with producer Erik Crary), the film has a small-scale resoluteness, a commitment to telling an understated story with care and calmness. While the occasional evocative shot springs up, the film mostly proceeds with a smart humility. Piet isn’t trying to dazzle the audience. Instead, he wants to tell his story well, which is a far more admirable goal than wrenching attention with anxiously gaudy visuals. In assessing Piet’s commitment to the integrity of his narrative … Continue reading ‘Cause when life looks like Easy Street there is danger at your door

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Fifteen

Dan Seeger

#15 — The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949) Technically, a period drama can be set in any past era, but the term immediately calls to mind a certain slice of the human timeline, long on corsets and stiff gatherings and short on electricity and rambunctiousness. In my informed but admittedly prejudiced view, a great many of these sorts of films are overly staid, buffed up with refinement and lacking in passion. The older the copyright date on the piece of cinema, the more likely my uncharitable prejudice is to be accurate, the confinements of still developing film stylings accentuating the already rigid, regimental … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Fifteen

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From the Archive: Arachnophobia

Dan Seeger

I suspect I thought I was pretty clever for the way I structured the beginning of this review. If nothing else, I was probably pleased that I included a Supertrain reference. Arachnophobia was a movie I needed to work hard to see, since it barely eked into the box office top ten for the summer of 1990 (our debut radio show counted down that top ten). It’s entirely possible it was one of the first movies that made me wonder what the hell I’d gotten myself into by committing to a weekly movie review show. This review was written for the home … Continue reading From the Archive: Arachnophobia

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Sixteen

Dan Seeger

#16 — The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940) There are several different stories that explain, at least in part, the genesis of The Great Dictator, but it surely must have started with the mustache. How bizarre to be Charlie Chaplin, sporter of a distinctive sprout of facial hair, an inky little dust broom right under the nose, watching newsreel footage of a hateful lunatic across the ocean who’s taken the same approach to his daily shaving regimen. Supposedly Chaplin took further inspiration from a viewing of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (that he cackled through, his own skill as … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Sixteen

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Enright and Berkeley, Garbus, McQuarrie, Van Sant

Dan Seeger

Promised Land (Gus Van Sant, 2012). This is exactly the sort of appalling earnest, dramatically inert fare that makes many rightly cringe when they think about the sort of medicine-tinged movies Oscar season might bring. With a story credit for Dave Eggers and a shared screenplay credit for Matt Damon and John Krasinski, who also start in the film, Promised Land takes the issue of fracking and tries to spin a sort of Capraesque fable with a dose of twenty-first century cynicism and a gotcha plot twist for good measure. Damon plays an ambitious employee of a global energy concern who … Continue reading Enright and Berkeley, Garbus, McQuarrie, Van Sant

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From the Archive: Jack the Bear

Dan Seeger

Jack the Bear isn’t a movie I remember well, but I strongly associate it with the doldrums of reviewing movies in the spring, when the Oscar-worthy material from the previous winter had finished cycling through our small Central Wisconsin town and the eagerly audience-friendly stuff was being held back for summer. Now, there’s a fairly ambitious year-round release schedule with only a handful of weekends (like, ahem, this one) devoid of movies that are interesting in one way or another. That wasn’t the case in the early nineteen-nineties. There were long stretches filled with the material in which the studios … Continue reading From the Archive: Jack the Bear

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Seventeen

Dan Seeger

#17 — The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges, 1942) By all evidence, Preston Sturges despised being confined, either by studio meddling or expectations. His distinctive comic voice, as bold as any ever committed to cinema, didn’t fit cleanly into the polished, reticent refinements of his era, when every last movie had to run through a clumsy, inconsistent official approval process. The filmmaker’s embedded cynicism was challenge enough to the dainty norms, but his rambunctious playfulness with the rigors of narrative structure could set his work teetering on the precipice of blissful mayhem. The Palm Beach Story exemplifies that clownishly caustic dynamic. Sturges … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Seventeen

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How do you know you’ll recognize me? I’m not too clear, but I’m easy to see

Dan Seeger

I’m not often able to assert the following right after seeing a new movie: I have a clear favorite scene in Mistress America. Tracy (Lola Kirke), a young woman in her first semester of college, has just been charged by her new friend and anticipated step-sister, Brooke (Greta Gerwig), with picking up some pasta for dinner. Alone in the grocery store, Tracy is flummoxed by the array of options before her, both in trying to determine which brand is fancy enough to impress her older, more worldly companion and simply which damn shape she should opt for. Maybe the ones that … Continue reading How do you know you’ll recognize me? I’m not too clear, but I’m easy to see