I am currently fighting a battle against some sort of ivy I planted in a flower bed a long time ago.  It started out as green and creamy white and didn’t grow tall enough to lift off the ground.  But it eventually evolved into pure green shoots that grew too tall to support themselves.  They […]

In 1974’s Ransom (released in the US as The Terrorists), Sean Connery takes on a group of terrorists who have hijacked an airliner and have a British diplomat held hostage.  One would expect the former James Bond and future star of Highlander, The Hunt for Red October and The Rock to open a big ol’ […]

Not too long ago, I finally saw The Public Enemy, Jimmy Cagney’s most famous gangster role.  Now I finally caught up with what is essentially the equivalent of that for Edward G. Robinson, 1931’s Little Ceasar.  I know it isn’t fair to compare those films, but I preferred the Cagney picture over this one. The […]

In movies, people are always taking sanctuary in churches, monasteries and convents, but I do not recall ever hearing about somebody doing this in real life.  This is what residents of a flooded town do in 1951’s Thunder on the Hill, taking shelter in a hilltop convent.  As for me, I wasn’t taken in when […]

Is it possible to be a thief and yet deeply care about the people steal from?  For me, that enigma is the heart of 2019’s Bad Education, a dramatization of the largest embezzlement from a public school system to date.  Note the addition of “to date”, as we’ll probably have an even bigger one at […]

Hell hath no fury like a 50-foot-tall woman scorned.  At least, that’s what 1958’s Attack of the 50 Foot Woman would have us believe.  Allison Hayes plays the titular character.  Before her transformation, she was in a bad way.  For reasons unclear to me, she still loves her scheming, greedy, adulterous husband (William Hudson).  He […]

$2.49 a pound, but you’ll save more if you buy in bulk. 1956 noir The Price of Fear has an interesting premise.  Lex Barker plays a man on the hook for two crimes.  Given the timing of them, he could only have committed one or the other.  Fact is, he committed neither. Merle Oberon was […]

One of my favorite meals I can remember was at a suburban Thai restaurant where the power was out at the time.  Their kitchen was gas, so they could still cook.  As long as you had cash, they would serve you.  We sat there and ate in the light breeze flowing through the space from […]

I just finished watching 1951’s Storm Warning, and I’m feeling a little punch drunk. Ginger Rogers plays a fashion model.  In a deceptively benign opening scene, she’s on a bus with her travelling companion, a co-worker who has a crush on her.  There’s a cute exchange between them, and an exposition dump where we learn […]

Hollywood sure does get some wood over movies about making movies.  1958’s The Female Animal opens on a wide shot of a movie shoot.  Our point of view is dead-on what appears to be beachside cliff.  There is a wood-and-rope bridge across a waterfall running over the edge of a cliff.  Hedy Lamarr is on […]

I hate celebrity culture.  Even hating celebrity culture is part of the omnipresent celebrity culture.  I don’t think it can even be avoided by ignoring it.  It’s like air—it’s just always there. I have only been to L.A. once but I, when I was there, everybody I met first asked me two questions: (1) where […]

1966 UK film The Wrong Box is perhaps the most gentle black comedy I have seen.  I think we’re going to need a term for this shade of black comedy: maybe charcoal grey or just grey.  What about off-white comedy? The plot concerns the final survivors of a tontine established by their fathers when they […]

For decades, I have been watching American films that supposedly take place in foreign lands, yet everybody there speaks English.  I didn’t bat an eye watching those movies, yet I found myself deeply confused by the 1965 Italian production The Vengeance of Lady Morgan when we see a character wearing a kilt.  I started wondering […]