#14 — The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957) There’s so much about The Seventh Seal that amazes me, all of it timeless and yet compounded by placing the film in the context of its era. I love the film’s experimentalism, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Fourteen
Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943). Though he would sometimes demure at the question, this was typically the title Hitchcock offered up as his default answer when asked about his personal favorite among his hefty, dazzling oeuvre. I can’t really back him up on that, even though I can completely understand how this one would loom large for the Master. He’d made great films before this (The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, and Suspicion among them), but there’s something about this one that feels like the Hitchcock cinematic voice locked in for good. The film follows Charlie Newton (Joseph Cotten), a … Continue reading Arzner, Byrkit, Hitchcock, Pakula, Tartakovsky
Ah, yes, the home video segment. How very early nineties. Wasn’t that a time? Within a few months, this was sort of a filler segment on the show as we were invariably writing about films we’d already covered previously, and we didn’t necessarily have something new and riveting to add. The main servicing to previous reviews was a consideration of how something might play better or worse on the television screen, then much smaller and squarer, of course. Usually, we each covered one movie new to video. I’m not sure why I doubled up here. We must have had a … Continue reading From the Archive: Cliffhanger and Sliver
#15 — 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957) In the annals of cinema, there are undoubtedly more impressive debut directorial efforts than Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men, but there are few that so perfectly captured and forecasted the defining strengths … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Fifteen
#16 — The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959) Steven Spielberg once attributed the initiating spark of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial to none other than François Truffaut, noting that the French filmmaker told him on the set of Close Encounters of the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Sixteen
Maleficent (Robert Stromberg, 2014). This piece of fairy tale revisionism might be more affecting if it didn’t arrive on the heels of the same studio’s Frozen, which pulled off basically the same switcheroo (including the subversion of the “true love’s kiss” trope) with more spirit. Judging from what’s onscreen, not much thought went into this project after the dream casting of Angelina Jolie was secured. The certainty that her presence as one of the most iconic villains in the annals of Disney Animated Classics would be enough to make the film compelling comes tantalizing close to becoming a proven truth. … Continue reading Allen, Assonitis, Korda, Stromberg, Tetzlaff
#17 — The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) Westerns, long a staple of Hollywood filmaking, were absolutely huge in the post-War years. According to Glenn Frankel’s book on the making of The Searchers, by the time John Ford’s iconic film was … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Seventeen
When we were producing The Reel Thing on WWSP-90FM, we were able to get on the list with a couple of studios and promotional houses, receiving electronic press kits for their releases, especially the biggest ones. There were few bigger … Continue reading From the Archive: The Addams Family
#18 — Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) One of my favorite moviegoing experiences occurred in the fall of 1996, when I saw the restoration of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo in Chicago. Handled by the team that previously provided similar touch-ups to Spartacus … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Eighteen
#17 — Michelle Pfeiffer as Ingrid Magnussen in White Oleander (Peter Kosminsky, 2002) This might be a good time to reiterate a central tenet of this series: highlighting a certain performance isn’t intended to anoint it as the best ever … Continue reading Greatish Performances #17
Coffee for Two 