Wilfrid Hyde-White is one of those actors who is seemingly in at least a hundred films from the first half-century of sound cinema, and is best cast when he can be a bit of a scoundrel.  Such is the case with 1960’s Two-Way Stretch, in which he plays the criminal mastermind whose last exploit put […]

Given Cary Grant admitted to taking LSD on at least one occasion, 1938’s Topper Takes a Trip is not about the kind of trip I thought it would be.  Also, I keep forgetting he is not the titular character. Instead, that is Roland Young, once again playing a bumbling bank owner who is forever unlucky […]

When my wife and I learned The Beta Band were reuniting for a tour, the only question was where to go see them. It was shocking they were doing this two decades after they had ceased to be a going concern. It was even more astonishing they were hitting some cities in the U.S., a […]

In 1966, John Lennon ill-advisedly said in an interview that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.  He also said, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink.”  This did not go down well with the public, especially in the Bible belt of America.  For a while, mass burnings of the band’s records were a […]

The first date I went on with my eventual wife was an advance screening of 1991’s Mystery Date.  Although the date was very important to me, the screening was just another of a long line of them, courtesy of the passes I received as my job of being a critic for a community newspaper.  It […]

At a record show, I have achieved minor infamy by being the guy who, when asked what he’s looking for, usually responds with “garage and gospel”.  Those genres may seem to be polar opposites, but I like the latter best when it is as raw and gritty as the former.  Also, I try to not […]

There is an ongoing debate in film circles as to whether or not Casablanca is noir.  I know I’m on the fence and unwilling to commit to either side.  1978’s The Cheap Detective is firmly on the side that it is, as that is one of the two films it primarily parodies.  The other is […]

When a Joe Dante movie is on blu-ray and there isn’t a commentary, I always wonder if it was a troubled production.  1998’s Small Soldiers is a such a disc and I suspect such a production.  Admittedly, I don’t know anything that happened in the course of making this picture.  But, between the lack of […]

The Sundance film festival recently pulled up stakes from where it was hosted in Park City, Utah, for over four decades.  Odd how a small town so strongly associated with cinema has had so few films made there.  The only one that comes to my mind is 1981 independently-produced horror flick The Boogens, which has […]

Early 2025 found the US federal government targeting universities for their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, threatening more than 50 of those institutions with the withholding of federal funds if they did not comply.  Only a handful of these refused to cave to this demand, the most high-profile being Harvard.  More recently, the president tried […]

There’s a quote by Sarah Dessen I like, about how home is not a place but a moment.  I love 1982’s Tron and, when I watch it, it is like I reconnect with part of me from when I saw it in its original theatrical run.  Then there was 2010s Tron: Legacy, for which I […]

I never expected to see Ginger Rogers so enamored with pot, yet 1954’s Beautiful Stranger has her spending a great deal of time throwing clay pots, firing them in a kiln and glazing them.  Wait, what did you think I was talking about? I always like scenes in movies where characters discover joy in some […]

I wouldn’t think there would be rare egg collectors, yet some of the things I collect have made me realize there are collectors for absolutely anything.  Not sure which would surprise me more, the weirdest things anybody has ever collected or the most bizarre sexual kinks which have ever existed. In 1984’s A Breed Apart, […]

October is my favorite time of year.  1982’s Something Wicked This Way Comes is set in a small American town in the 1910’s over the course of three days late in that month, and it captures a certain October-ness.  This, in a movie without much imaginary associated with the month, bar one shot of a […]

Just looking at the title of 1967’s Luv should give potential viewers an idea of bitter satire to be found within.  It had me thinking of the intros to both The Shangri-La’s “Give Him a Great Big Kiss” and The New York Dolls’s “Lookin’ for a Kiss” which explicitly spell it that way.  Given how […]