#44 — Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957) “I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.” There. I’ve completed one of the necessities of writing a piece of any amount of skill and … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Four
The earliest months of the film year are brutally hard to get through. The problem is lessened by the quality offerings from the prior calendar year that dribble into smaller markets in fits and starts, but most films that get their initial, often widespread release in the months January and February (and even into the spring) are largely the weaker material that studios felt couldn’t compete in Oscar season or weren’t worth holding back for the highly charged summer season. That’s still the case, but it was even more pronounced back in the early nineteen-nineties, before the release schedule started … Continue reading From the Archive: Once Around
I will grant that producing an Oscars telecast is a thankless task, perhaps one that has crossed over fully into hopelessness. Even in a year such as this, when there was actually some doubt about the inevitability of certain major … Continue reading The Incredible Shrinking Oscars
Let’s begin by noting this: if I didn’t refer to The Empire Strikes Back as Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back in 1980–and I assure you that I did not–then I’m sure as hell not going to start now with some miserable acquiescence to George Lucas’s cumbersome attempts to forever remind people that he has more interest in perpetuating brands than in creating films. Ahem. At the urging of students I was working with at the time, I signed up for a LiveJournal account in the summer of 2004. For ages, I had no real idea what to … Continue reading From the Archive: Revenge of the Sith
As the banner above makes colorfully clear, this particular annual post is better-suited to make an appearance on Sunday, but that’s reserved for one of our beloved exercises in counting backwards. So instead, we’ll use it as a wrap-up to the extended retrospective on the best cinematic offerings of the calendar year not-so-recently completed. I’ve already rattled off my choices for the ten best films of the year, and here are the performances I’d celebrate if I had the privilege of filling out a nominating ballot issued to a member Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences acting branch, ranked … Continue reading Twenty Performances, or Splitting Adams
When I’m partial to a film, I will often devotedly adhere to whatever preferred version of it the filmmaker puts out there, including an alternative styling of the title. For example, I strongly advocate for the exclusive use of lowercase … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2013 — Number One
I’ve now written about Frances Ha so many times that I’ve effectively given up on trying to make certain I come up with something new to say when I take another crack at it. I don’t bother to review how … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2013 — Number Two
#45 — Somebody Up There Likes Me (Robert Wise, 1956) No matter how many times the comparison is invoked by those trying to distract from the damage wrought by the sport, boxing isn’t poetry. It is instead angry prose slammed into place by harshly struck typewriter keys. The definitive cinematic statement of this truth is and will forever be Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, though there are certainly predecessors to that masterpiece that make the same argument with similarly brutish authority, most notably Somebody Up There Likes Me. Based on the autobiography written by middleweight champion Rocky Graziano (with what was … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Five
I think American Hustle is a fine name for David O. Russell’s latest film, but I prefer the title printed across the front page of the script he agreed to direct: American Bullshit. That has less to do with a … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2013 — Number Three
#46 — Beat the Devil (John Huston, 1953) Like most people, I suspect, I have a tendency to think of films of the nineteen-fifties–at least Hollywood films of the nineteen-fifties–as fairly staid and safe, lacking the rush of invention and … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Six
Coffee for Two 