The dialogue in David Mamet’s best work has a certain rhythm to it.  Few actors deliver such lines as brilliantly as Joe Mantegna.  There is almost a musical quality to his line deliveries.  He stars with Don Ameche in the second picture Mamet directed, and that is 1988’s Things Change.  I thought I had seen […]

I refuse to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s because I was so appalled by Mickey Rooney’s yellowface performance of it as a deeply offensive portrayal of a Japanese man.  Both Rooney and director Blake Edwards went on to later express regret, but I still will not be watching the rest of the picture beyond the actor’s […]

The concept of the political fixer is something I find unnerving, and the people in that role are generally creepy.  Consider Roy Cohn, a terrible person who was Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel during the House Committee hearings to week out Communists.  It seems to take a certain kind of person to gather and retain great […]

The early 60’s must have been a strange time.  The movie studios, at least, seemed to be confused.  Hitchcock’s Psycho suddenly made the campy, gimmick-laden horrors of William Castle look positively quaint in comparison.  At the same time, there were so many absent-minded and nutty professors on the screen.  Castle decided to step out of […]

Most people would assume that, if a train could talk, it would say, “I think I can…I think I can…”, but the train in 1949’s The Undercover Man goes “How about your wife?  How about your wife?”, at least in Glenn Ford’s head, per a looped threat said in the voice of mob lawyer Barry […]

I have a title ready if anybody ever decides to make a second movie about a deadly dessert that consumes the consumer, and that is Terrormisu: The Dessert Which Eats You.  Not that this is any better than the title of a movie where that is exactly what happens, that being 1985’s The Stuff.  Looking […]

Somebody I know once watched an ant carrying an impossibly large cake crumb.  This person was very impressed and wondered aloud how much honey the ants in the hive might make from that.  After a pause, the rest of us broke out in hysterical laughter, though it is easy to make the logical fallacy that […]

If one didn’t know in advance 1957’s The Tarnished Angels was from a Faulker novel, the turgid dialogue might clue in a person.  An example: “I could tell you an idyll of winged knights jousting with death, if I felt you could smell a story the way you smell whiskey.”  Huh? This is from Rock […]

A good friend of mine lost a considerable amount of weight by reducing their sodium intake.  That is difficult to do in the present age, where there is so much of the mineral in every product.  Before seeing 1954’s Bait, I never considered a complete lack of it could possibly be detrimental to one’s health.  […]

It has been a while since I’ve heard about anybody winning a Darwin Award.  That dubious honor goes to a person who accidentally removes themselves from the gene pool through a manner which is darkly humorous.  Consider the recipient who “won” after flying their jet-propelled Impala into a cliff face at 300 MPH.  Watching 1991’s […]

The horror movie trope of the babysitter alone with one or more children in the house as she is stalked by a psychopath is cliche as to become a kind of Mad Libs. Let’s see: [name of actress playing younger than her chronological age] is a [level of education or, if college, major] student babysitting […]

There must be a law somewhere mandating Bono has to appear in every music documentary.  In a way, it is noble he makes himself available for so many productions of this type.  On the other hand, he never fails to appear self-important as he dispenses a typical load of shite like he does in 2013’s […]

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 […]