It astonishes me how most people are almost desperate to be conned.  One particular huckster comes to mind, somebody who seduced the American public with their everyman demeanor, only to fleece them for every cent they’re worth.  This is a monster whose appetites have grown to monstrous proportions.  Initially, they only wanted money and women.  […]

I have never been to Paris, but I wonder what it is about the place that lends itself to films about assorted, unrelated characters.  The first one that comes to my mind is 2006’s Paris, Je T’aime, but that may be supplanted by 1953’s Innocents in Paris now that I have seen it. This charming […]

There is some odd slang involving cats, the more I think about it.  Why “cat burglar”, for example?  I found myself thinking this while watching the first scene of Hitchcock’s 1955 picture To Catch a Thief, in where we see a montage of items being stolen by such a sneak thief, interspersed with shots of […]

When I think of actors from Hollywood’s golden era who were best in tough guy roles, my mind immediately goes to Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, and in that order.  From today’s perspective, I find it odd one of the hottest actors of the time for such parts was George Raft. My […]

White elephant gift exchanges are a fad that has lasted longer than I thought possible and which can die whenever it feels like it.  I always wondered how it started and, though it is unlikely it was inspired by 1940’s The Shop Around the Corner, it has what I think might be the first item […]

To my surprise, 1959’s 4D Man is not about my grades for the first quarter of my senior year of high school, when I was at my most disillusioned and unmotivated.  Instead, it is about a scientist (Robert Lansing) who discovers he can move through solid surfaces.  Naturally, this drives him mad and makes him […]

The preposterously titled Place Title Here: A Collection of Ramblings About Movies from the First Two Years of Place Logo Here is now available. This compendium is a curated selection of more than 200 movie reviews from this blog, all with corrections and many with rewritten portions. Doubtlessly, some new errors have also been introduced. […]

I have seen films that adaptations of, or inspired by, a wide variety of works, but 1946’s Bedlam is the first picture I have seen which contains a credit like this: “suggested by the Williams Hogarth painting Bedlam: Plate #8 ‘The Rake’s Progress’”. Given the title of that work, I can only assume it depicts […]

An eleven-year-old Brooke Shields is wearing all white while holding a sparkler and reclining on a padded stretcher being held aloft by an adult on each end, paraded around a dining room where a group of wealthy men are appraising her.  This feels like something out of Pasolini’s Salo as, like something out of that […]

Some movies stretch to find content to occupy the screen for 90 minutes.  Then there are films such as 1932’s Chandu the Magician which cram so much into 71 minutes that you feel like you have just watched every installment of a serial of the time, but in one sitting. In fact, almost every aspect […]

One of the extras accompanying 1982’s Tootsie on the Criterion Collection blu-ray is an interview with Dustin Hoffman where he says the film hasn’t dated at all.  I challenge that statement, given the increased focus on the struggles of trans actors in recent years, as the plot of this movie has him pretend to be […]

My favorite era of Hitchcock’s film is his 50’s run from Rear Window through to North by Northwest.  There are some outliers in that period, the time in which his associated with television began with Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The sensibilities of television inform one of the most distinctive entries in his oeuvre, 1955’s The Trouble […]

I primarily know Richard Dix from the run of Whistler movies he did, and he had an odd screen presence in those.  That slightly off demeanor servers him well in 1943’s The Ghost Ship. In this, he is the authoritarian captain of a large cargo vessel.  He makes such statements as “In San Pedro, I […]

I bet every culture around the world has some variation of the old American standard of parents asking their kids that, if their friends jumped off a bridge, whether they would follow suit.  Given that, I assume there is a British equivalent, and all I can wonder is whether the parents of the bikers in […]

Revolving restaurants are a strange concept.  I have only eaten at one once before and the allure of it was lost on me, even while taking in the 360 degree view. 1936’s Love Before Breakfast has an even weirder…um, spin on the concept, and that is the tables are on a rotating platform in the […]