Tag: alfred hitchcock

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Edel, Farrow, Hitchcock, Jordan, Siegel

Dan Seeger

His Kind of Woman (John Farrow, 1951). How many other actors completely own a genre of film the way that Robert Mitchum does film noir? It’s like he was born into a delivery room filled with murky shadows and cigarette smoke, the doctor instructing the nurse to slap his bottom by growling, “Give him what’s comin’ to him, and make him sing when you do it.” He moves through this story of scheming and duplicity at a Mexican resort as if he’s walking through his own front door, tossing of aloof wisecracks with the ease of a guy who’s already … Continue reading Edel, Farrow, Hitchcock, Jordan, Siegel

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Demme, Hitchcock, Ramis, Scott, Wyler

Dan Seeger

Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953). It would take some dedicated hunting through Hollywood history to find another star turn that justifies hanging an entire film upon it as much as the one at the center of this lovely wisp of a romantic comedy. It’s really all about Audrey Hepburn and her swoon-inducing performance as a pampered princess who steals away from her privileged, cloistered world to indulge in a burst of freedom across the streets of Rome. She’s utterly charming in a guileless way, but it’s the levels of personality that she injects into the performance that really sell the … Continue reading Demme, Hitchcock, Ramis, Scott, Wyler

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She’s making movies on location, she don’t know what it means

Dan Seeger

Kung Fu Panda (Mark Osborne and John Stevenson, 2008). in the realm of computer animated features, there is Pixar and then there’s everyone else. Others have reaped box office success, but there’s an broad, enduring gap when it comes to artistry. Dreamworks Animation is arguably the outfit working most diligently to cross the divide. Kung Fu Panda doesn’t accomplish that, in part because the storytelling is as by-the-numbers as it gets, but it does boast a visual sense that is smoothly well-realized, generally engaging, and, at times, very striking. In particular, the sequences involving the elaborate prison created for the … Continue reading She’s making movies on location, she don’t know what it means

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Pivotal Film Selling Out Your Monkey

Dan Seeger

Taxi to the Dark Side (Alex Gibney, 2007). This Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature catalogs and condemns the harsh treatment of prisoners in the Bush administration’s zealous “war on terror.” Gibney lays out the evidence of vicious abuse and clear-cut torture perpetrated by the American military at prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Just as importantly–arguably even more importantly–he examines the ways in which the highest leaders created, encourages and perpetuated the environment for these horrendous practices and then casually, heartlessly blamed the enlisted men when the worst of it came to light. Like Charles Ferguson’s No … Continue reading Pivotal Film Selling Out Your Monkey

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Oh the movie never ends, it goes on and on and on and on

Dan Seeger

Trouble the Water (Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, 2008). It would be easy to make a documentary about the devastation Hurricane Katrina brought to New Orleans and the equally disastrous governmental response that is grounded in apoplectic anger, especially since indignation seems to be the default starting point for many current non-fiction filmmakers. Deal and Lessin create something more delicate, more nuanced, more complicated, and, because of these qualities, far more fascinating. The hook of the film’s first half is on-the-scene camcorder footage taken by Ninth Ward resident Kimberly Rivers Roberts as her neighborhood and then her home floods during … Continue reading Oh the movie never ends, it goes on and on and on and on