I can suspend my disbelief for some of the strangest things.  Zombies.  A mineral from space growing out of control and threatening to destroy the world.  Tom Cruise as a human being with actual feelings.  But I had the hardest time accepting the central conceit of 2013’s Snowpiercer. You see, the entirety of the picture […]

Propaganda posters are an element of WWII culture which intrigue me.  Consider that famous slogan from some of them: “Loose lips sink ships”.  William Wright is a high-ranking government agent in 1945’s Escape in the Fog, yet he fails to heed that wisdom, loudly talking on the phone when the treacherous Ernie Adams is lurking […]

In Ian Frazier’s book Coyote vs. Acme, there’s a deeply strange piece which appears to be the script of a play, except all the characters are various places.  In 1953 noir City That Never Sleeps, Chill Willis plays the city of Chicago.  We first hear him, as the city, waxing pretentiously about what happens at […]

I wish I had been to a Tiki bar before I stopped drinking.  I am aware exotica has a taint of cultural appropriation, yet I am fascinated by the aesthetic of America’s obsession in the 50’s with the south Pacific. 1954’s Hell’s Half Acre has the curious distinction of being a noir which was filmed […]

1957’s The Crooked Circle is a boxing noir where the technical advisor in the opening credits is revealed to some unfortunate soul with the name of Mushy Callahan.  You have to wonder how many punches a guy had to take to the face to get a name like “Mushy”. A young boxer played by John […]

1985’s crime comedy Big Trouble is not an adaptation of Dave Barry’s novel of the same name.  In fact, I’m less sure of what it is or, at least, what it aspires to be. Perhaps the thing I least expected it to be is a picture directed by John Cassavetes.  It is a sad way […]

One of my favorite videogames is Frog Bog for the Intellivision.  It is a simple premise and had been a game even before that particular incarnation.  Each of two players controls a frog, trying to catch as many airborne insects as they can as the leap from one of two lily pads.   It is uncomplicated […]

I miss Matt Groening’s Life in Hell comic strip.  More likely, I am feeling nostalgia for the days of the alternative newspapers in which it would appear.  The two characters I found most interesting were the identical, fez-topped Akbar and Jeff, and my most favorite of their appearances is when one secretly reads the diary […]

How I long to one day see a strong gust of wind whisk a terrified mime through the air and over the horizon.  I think everybody agrees with Ernie Hudson’s cop in the original The Crow when he said, “That walking against the wind shit, I hate that.” In 1974’s Shanks is the first time […]

1947’s The Flame is the kind of noir where the entire story is told in flashback.  That is a conventional device for the genre, and it isn’t the first picture where everything we see from the past is being read for a very long letter.  In these kinds of films, I always wonder who had […]

In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, there are unions, or “guilds”, for everything.  There’s a beggars’ guild, for example.  Another is for assassins.  Then there’s the one for thieves.  You have to wonder what their operation is like.  You know, meetings, dues collection.  The boring stuff. I wonder if it is similar to the thieves’ union […]

One might not realize how important ambient sound is to a movie until you see a picture without it.  In the earliest days of the talkie era, pictures often had little more audio than voices.  It’s as if they should have labeled them “only talkies”.  The resulting effect is worse than a silent movie, as […]

My grandfather loved westerns, especially those starring John Wayne.  I remember watching these with him, so many that I feel like I had to have seen every film in the man’s filmography.  And yet, I somehow can’t recall a single frame of any one of them, nor have I been motivated to see any of […]

Lately, empathy has been in alarming decline in the U.S., most tellingly by some outspoken alleged Christians.  I will concede one can only extend themselves to help others, and that the difference between a hand-out and a hand-up is always a grey area.  Peter Sellers plays an idealistic and optimistic vicar in 1963’s Heavens Above!.  […]

It has been nearly a decade since the last 3D TV was manufactured.  In that same period, we have seen a remarkable decline in sales of movies on physical media.  Between these two facts, it seems odd distributors like Kino Lorber keep making 3D blu-rays, but God bless ‘em for continuing to do so.  As […]