The past few years have seen polling workers and the vote tabulation process subjected to extreme scrutiny, with officials and even low-level workers facing intimidation and death threats.  In 2008’s Swing Vote, young teen Madeline Carroll is so upset deadbeat dad Kevin Costner has failed to show up at the polling station, that she forges […]

When you find yourself in cheap motel room, heavily armed and with the windows obscured with cardboard and duck-tape, you know you have made some questionable life choices.  This is the scenario Michael Shannon and Joel Edgerton find themselves in at the beginning of 2016’s Midnight Special.  This is just one of a series of […]

It had only been a year since King Kong, and so that film’s star is second-billed in 1934’s Black Moon.  I find that odd, since Fay Wray is a tertiary character in this, at best.  Curiously it is third-billed Dorothy Burgess who is the true star here. This is a high society woman who was […]

I have enjoyed a great deal of neo-noir, and most such films are at least partly staged in the desert.  The entirety of 2015’s The Frontier rarely loses sight of the titular diner and conjoined motel, which is in an area so desolate there are no other proximate structures.  It’s a good place to have […]

CGI is rarely convincing to me, but the alien at the center of 2020’s Sputnik is almost good enough to make me forget its DNA is all ones and zeroes.  This was even more of a surprise to me, as this is a Russian film, which I assume means less money went into it than […]

It has only been in the past five years or so that I have truly come to appreciate the Marx Brothers, but I can still recall many of the reasons why, even if I didn’t actively dislike them, I was confused by why they are so legendary.  With this in mind, I have decided to […]

We will never see the likes of the Marx Brothers again, and woe to those who try to be them.  On the other hand, we’ll never see a new Marx Brothers film, so it might be interesting if others tried to carry that torch.  It was in that frame of mind that I approached 1992’s […]

Some may wonder why the 1967 film David Holzman’s Diary was canonized into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.  Criterion also saw fit to include it in its collection; albeit, only on laserdisc.  Anybody who was confused as to why Citizen Kane is ubiquitously considered a great film will surely be downright bewildered as to why […]

Interesting how a film made in the 50’s and set in the late 20’s feels like it is from a vantage point of a hundred years, but a film made today about the 1990’s wouldn’t seem as if so much time has passed.  Or maybe I’m being naïve.  All I know is 1952’s Has Anybody […]

I have a weird listening relationship with jazz.  I don’t listen to it often but, when I go through a phase where I do, I listen to it almost exclusively. So, I was aware of the legendary Blue Note label before watching 1997 documentary Blue Note: A Story of Modern Jazz, but didn’t know much […]

When I have heard the term “Capracorn” used to dismissively describe the output of director Frank Capra, I assumed it was warranted primarily by his It’s a Wonderful Life.  It sure doesn’t apply to Arsenic & Old Lace, which is one my absolute favorite films.  But, now that I’ve seen 1936’s Mr. Deeds Goes to […]

Among the more famous of the many renown album covers in Bob Dylan’s catalog is that of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.  It shows Dylan and a woman walking towards the camera, her arm looped through his and hugging it tight.  There’s a huge, genuine smile on her face.  I challenge any guy who has seen […]

Kevin McCarthy is trapped in a noir nightmare.  In 1956’s Nightmare, he has a dream where he kills some guy in what appears to be a house of mirrors, ala 1947’s Lady from Shanghai.  He’s convinced he killed somebody when he discovers bruises around his windpipe and blood on his left arm.  He also discovers […]