For anybody who thinks my taste is movies is too high-falootin’, and skewed to disproportionately favor older cinema, I present to you my feelings concerning 1955’s Mister Roberts. This film was nominated for Best Picture, and has four screen legends top-billed: Henry Fonda, James Cagney, Wiliam Powell and Jack Lemmon, the last of whom won […]
Category: Watching
Movie: Local Hero (1983)
I have already written about a couple of movies written and directed by Bill Forsyth, a Scotsman with a unique filmmaking sensibility. The more of his work I see, the more I am reminded of the work of Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki. Each has a distinctive style, and I like how both have a deep […]
Movie: The Fearmakers (1958)
Jacques Tourneur is a name everybody should know, as he directed three movies everybody should see: Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and Out of the Past. He also made a great many other features. Unfortunately, most of those failed to really catch fire. One such film is 1958’s The Fearmakers. This is not […]
Movie: Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)
I have come to begrudgingly tolerate product placement as part of modern moviemaking. At least, it’s better than the ads all theatres seem to be showing before the trailers. Now, that I find unacceptable. Still, I wondered when placement in films would cross a line for me, and now it has in Shazam! Fury of […]
Movie: The House on Carroll Street (1988)
I have seen a lot of vintage film noir. A lot of it concerns the red scare at the time. Y’know, the McCarthy hearings and all that. That material hilariously locks those films so firmly in their time that they might as well be insects preserved in amber. 1988 neo-noir The House on Carroll Street […]
Movie: The Damned Don’t Cry (1950)
Despite my best intentions, I am still always comparing Joan Crawford to Bette Davis when I see the former in a picture. That isn’t fair to her, and there are definitely movies where she is better suited to a role than Davis would have been. A great example of such is 1950’s The Damned Don’t […]
Movie: Thunder Road (1958)
Maybe somebody can prove me wrong, but I doubt there has ever been a good movie where running moonshine is the chief mechanism driving the plot. The first such picture off the top of my head is White Lightnin’ Road, and what an abomination that was. It is the kind of subject matter that consistently […]
Movie: Moving Violations (1985)
It is awfully sad when a film cast as its lead somebody only because they are the relative of a famous actor. Consider the pathetic Operation Kid Brother from 1967, which is one of the very few pictures to star Sean Connery’s younger brother, Neil. I thought about that feature a great many times while […]
Movie: Bang! Bang! You’re Dead! (1966)
A great many comedies of the 60’s were riffs on James Bond. In retrospect, one would think there had to be at least one film in cinemas on any given week after 1964 that had some sort of spy hijinks in a foreign country and featuring at least one beautiful, “international” woman. The lead actor […]
Movie: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)
It’s weird how many films in the Disney canon are compilations of shorter films. In some of these portmanteaus, the associations between the films will be stronger than in others. It was a trend starting with Fantasia, and look at how tenuous the connections are between the pieces of that film. 1949’s The Adventures of […]
Movie: The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom (1968)
I listen to a great deal of psychedelic music from the late 60’s, especially that from the UK. I suspect my listening preferences have established a false correlation in my mind, where I have misled myself into believing I also enjoy off-kilter British comedies of that era. With each additional one I watch, I am […]
Movie: Strange Brew (1983)
I keep thinking the comedies of the 80’s were all oversexed, but then I forgot about such glorious outliers as Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, which seemed to subvert every expectation one might have for a comedy from a major studio at the time. Almost as audacious, but not quite as good, is 1983’s Strange Brew. This […]
Movie: Outland (1981)
1981’s Outland really wants to be Alien. Its opening title sequence recalls that of the earlier film. It takes place in a grimy, grungy mining facility on the Jupiter moon IO, but it might as well be the Nostromo. The score is by Jerry Goldsmith, who provided that service for the other film. Heck, I […]
Movie: Images (1972)
Cathryn Harrison must have had a curious upbringing. In her teenage years, she starred in two deeply weird movies: Louis Malle’s Black Moon and Robert Altman’s Images. She was also in the Donovan-starring The Pied Piper, which had to the most traumatic of those films to make. At least, it is the most traumatic to […]
Movie: The Killing Box (1993)
When I first saw a blu-ray listing for 1993’s The Killing Box, I was more than a bit confused. It isn’t that weird nowadays to have a movie where, during the civil war, both sides find themselves facing a common enemy of undead confederate soldiers. What did surprise me is the cast for this. Really, […]