I’m not much of a Christmas person.  It isn’t like I actively dislike the holiday.  It isn’t like I have traumatic childhood memories associated with it.  I actually like some music associated with the holiday, even some of the traditional fare.  What I don’t like is the saccharine sweetness of so much Christmas entertainment.  Much […]

It has always been difficult to make a stellar Christmas movie, though that doesn’t keep studios from trying every year.  Even in the earlier years of cinema, you had to sit through a lot of dreck around the holidays.  The real miracle of the original Miracle on 34th Street is what an outstanding film that […]

Bill Forsyth makes interesting movies.  I doubt I would be able to tell a picture is one of his without knowing that in advance, but the ones I have seen so far have a humanity to them I greatly appreciate.  There’s also a quirkiness that goes beyond expected human behavior but never crosses into anything […]

I was recently shocked to discover how much I enjoyed 1939’s Remember the Night, which stars Barbara Stanwyck.  This was allegedly a Christmas movie, though I believe it would be enjoyable any time of year.  Six years later, Stanwyck was cast in a yet another Christmas screwball comedy, Christmas in Connecticut. The plot is a […]

The first thing we see in 1965’s A Study in Terror–the very first frame–is of a woman’s feet as she treads a cobblestone road at night in crimson, high-laced shoes.  It is odd how much is telegraphed by that image, even to one who doesn’t know anything else about the movie they’re about see: this […]

2015’s The Wave was a pleasantly surprising disaster-action export from Norway.  At its center was Kristoffer Joner as a geologist at a station where they monitor sensors in an unstable mountainside.  His intuition is stronger than the sensors, and his actions start residents of a nearby town evacuating before a landslide, and resulting tidal wave, […]

It may appear I am excessively harsh to most movies I write about, but I really try to find something positive to say about each.  Then there’s movies I fall in love with, and I really can’t seem to shut up about those.  Such is the case with 1939’s Remember the Night. I liked Barbara […]

The folk tale of Bluebeard is at least 400 years old.  I am amazed it has persisted into the public consciousness to this day, as it is a very simple, and rather repulsive, story.  It has been made into a movie many times over. There is not enough material to warrant the length of a […]

I’ll try to keep this review as short as the case for this blu-ray was thin.  I am starting to suspect UK distributor Network relegates to these cases the movies they know aren’t the jewels of their catalog. In this case, the movie is 1951’s The Long Dark Hall, a rather weak courtroom thriller.  Rex […]

James Cameron demonstrated his ability to think on his feet early in his career when he textured the walls of a spaceships walls with grids of Styrofoam Big Mac containers which were then spray-painted.  That was for Galaxy of Terror, which was produced by Roger Corman.  As a man who always knew how to stretch […]

I don’t know much about Curt Siodmak, but I bet he had some interesting stories concerning at least two of the features he directed.  Much like Love Slaves of the Amazon, 1956’s Curucu, Beast of the Amazon was filmed entirely in Brazil.  I’m not sure if that applies to interiors which, like that other film, […]

Heathers has a lot to answer for.  A few razor-sharp black comedies set in high school followed in its wake, but mostly we got cheap imitators like 1999’s Jawbreaker.  This is a movie that wants to be a biting satire, but it doesn’t have any bite.  Even worse, it isn’t very funny. The movie opens […]

What is one to do when a monster enters their lives, running roughshod over everything without ever being kept in check? When we first see Michael Gambon in 1989’s notorious The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, this gangster has a chef stripped naked while he and his thugs force-feed the poor man […]