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Party Girl (1958): “Long Live This Rubbish”
To view Party Girl click here. In 1958, Nicholas Ray directed his last film under the old studio system in Hollywood. Titled Party Girl, the film did not inspire a lot of passion among the...
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Justifiable Homicide: Le crime de Monsieur Lange (1936)
To view Le crime de Monsieur Lange click here. Jean Renoir considered Le crime de Monsieur Lange (1936) to be a turning point in his career, a film that opened “the door to some projects that are...
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Sharp as a Razor: Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980)
To view Dressed to Kill click here. Today it’s easy to take for granted what a big deal Dressed to Kill was when it opened in early 1980, but I think you could argue that no other film from director...
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Revisiting Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet (1996)
To view Hamlet click here. Late last year I had the great pleasure of seeing Derek Jacobi perform MEASURE + DIDO, a modern update of William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure that includes excerpts...
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The Times of Harvey Milk (1984)
To view The Times of Harvey Milk click here. Harvey Milk served only eleven months as the District 5 Supervisor of San Francisco but it can truly be said that his influence will outlive most...
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Directed by Nicholas Ray: On Dangerous Ground (’51)
To view On Dangerous Ground click here. Three years after Nicholas Ray made his directorial debut with 1948’s They Live by Night (which I wrote about here), he made On Dangerous Ground (1951),...
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Ireland in the Movies
The following is a guest post by writer Gareth Higgins: Many of us have had the experience of seeing a news story covering events of which we have first hand knowledge, and saying, Huh? That doesn’t...
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Being Happy Together (1997)
To view Happy Together click here. One of my favorite directors, Wong Kar-wai, is represented in FilmStruck’s new theme “Gay and Lesbian Cinema.” His film Happy Together (1997), a deceptively simple...
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The Beast In Me: Le Bête Humaine (1938)
To view La Bête Humaine click here. Following the transformative success of Grand Illusion (1937), Jean Renoir suddenly had an overwhelming number of opportunities. There was an offer on the table...
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Jeffrey (1995): Love in the ’90s Is Paranoid
To view Jeffrey click here. There’s something special about the wave of LGBT-friendly indies that swept into theaters in the mid-1990s, and it’s not hard to see why. Rapid changes were starting to...
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Animal Passions: Cat People (1942)
To view Cat People click here. This year marks the 75th anniversary of Cat People (1942) and subscribers can currently catch this spine-chilling classic on the Criterion Channel of FilmStruck through...
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Behind Closed Doors: 12 Angry Men (1957)
To view 12 Angry Men click here. Reginald Rose wrote for television, film and the theater, coming into his own in 1954 with a work that would be his masterpiece, 12 Angry Men. On television, it...
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Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life (1956)
To view Bigger Than Life click here. In 1955, Nicholas Ray made the technicolor family drama Rebel Without a Cause, which focused on the experiences of teenagers in the seemingly perfect confines of...
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Shattered Glass: The Tin Drum (1979)
To view The Tin Drum click here. There’s a scene in the novel, The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass, that portrays a place called The Onion Cellar Club. It’s a place where Germans can go to listen to music,...
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Bryan Foy and John Alton: An Unlikely Team
To view the “Anthony Mann/John Alton Noir” theme on FilmStruck, click here. Anthony Mann gained a reputation for creating lean, mean film noirs with the help of cinematographer extraordinaire John...
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Oh The Humanity: Dirigible (1931)
To view Dirigible click here. Summer movie season is already upon us, with superheroes saving the world from various varieties of destruction. I’m turning back the clock to 1931 to look at a disaster...
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Experience Preferred: The Dangerous Dynamic of The Servant (1963)
To view The Servant click here. It’s usually compelling for movie fans to see an actor trying to break out of a mold into which they’ve been cast by the public, and few did it so successfully or...
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Spies Among Us: Another Country (1984)
To view Another Country click here. “And there’s another country, I’ve heard of long ago, Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know; We may not count her armies, we may not see her...
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Into Thin Air: The Vanishing (1988)
To view The Vanishing click here. Years ago, I watched a made-for-television movie starring Cloris Leachman and Dabney Coleman called Dying Room Only (1973). It was written by a personal favorite of...
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Desperation and Bravery in Basil Dearden’s Victim (1961)
To view Victim click here. In late 19th century England, the Criminal Law Amendment Act was implemented, not only banning homosexuality, but making it a criminal offense. For decades, this senseless,...
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