These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. When it came time to create a poster for its strange new horror film in space, 20th … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — Alien movie poster
Man Hunt (Fritz Lang, 1941). Man Hunt was released six months before the U.S. officially entered World War II, making its animating incident fairly remarkable. A British adventurer (Walter Pidgeon) is traveling across the German countryside with his firearms and … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Man Hunt; All I Desire; The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
#47 — Delroy Lindo as Rodney Little in Clockers (Spike Lee, 1995) Through the nineteen-nineties, there was no shortage of gangstas and drug dealers in U.S. cinema. It was partially a reflection of the fretful concerns of the time, when the crack … Continue reading Greatish Performances #47
Panic in Year Zero (Ray Milland, 1962). This Cold War drama, one of a handful of films directed by Ray Milland, takes a fascinating approach to its tale of U.S. society in the immediate aftermath of nuclear weapons leveling a … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Panic in Year Zero; Searching; Stronger
#46 — Raul Julia as Gomez Addams in The Addams Family (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1991) Movie screens weren’t big enough for Raul Julia. He started working in film in the early nineteen-seventies and picked up a few additional credits throughout the … Continue reading Greatish Performances #46
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. Without delving into the … Continue reading Laughing Matters — How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended
Leaving Neverland (Dan Reed, 2019). Working with a landslide of troubling evidence and an abundance of cautious patience, British documentarian lays out a compelling, convincing case that Michael Jackson regularly perpetrated sexual abuse on boys that came into his orbit … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Leaving Neverland; Blaze; Denial
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. A long time ago, a studio’s marketing team was charged with convincing the general public that an … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — “Star Wars” trailer
Bad Company (Robert Benton, 1972). A relatively obscure entry in the legion of films from the late-nineteen-sixties and early-nineteen-seventies that sought to strip away the romanticizing so entrenched in the Western genre. A young man named Drew (Barry Brown) flees … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Bad Company; Abacus: Small Enough to Jail; Son of Saul
Documentary filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar live in Dayton, Ohio, one of many Midwestern U.S. cities that has historically counted on manufacturing to provide gainful employment for the citizenry. When the community’s auto manufacturing facility shut its doors, in … Continue reading Now Playing — American Factory
