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Just Some Guys from Jersey
To view Eddie and the Cruisers click here. In the past week or so, my illustrious peers at StreamLine have written with knowledge and insight about international classics like Mon Oncle (1958), rare...
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To Have and To Hold: Losing Ground (1982)
To view Losing Ground click here. Losing Ground (1982) is a shape-shifting drama of an imploding marriage, insinuating itself into the diverging head-spaces of a pair of quarreling intellectuals. Shot...
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Donkey Skin (1970): Who’s the Fairest of Them All?
To view Donkey Skin click here. I always love seeing what happens when international directors make it big on the foreign-language film circuit and start getting pressured to shoot films in English....
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Women at War: Onibaba (1964)
To view Onibaba click here. In feudal Japan, war is being waged between Imperial forces loyal to the reigning emperor and those who support the shogun. Samurai warriors wearing expensive armor and...
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Documenting Despair: Salesman (1968)
To view Salesman click here. Something happened to me the first time I saw Salesman (1968). Within just a few minutes, I felt a tightness in my chest, the kind I always associate with stress and...
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From Stage to Screen: William Wyler’s These Three (1936)
To view These Three click here. In 1934, Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour debuted on Broadway. Starring Anne Revere, Katherine Emery and Robert Keith, the production was a huge critical and...
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Hitchcock and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
To view The Man Who Knew Too Much click here. Years ago I read about Cecil B. DeMille’s adventures with The Squaw Man. If you’re unfamiliar with that title, it’s the first movie DeMille ever directed,...
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Seek Not Your Fortune in the Dark, Dreary Mine
To view Harlan County, U.S.A. click here. I tend to romanticize cinema verité filmmakers as rugged individualists who fearlessly shoot their footage under the most difficult of circumstances. Albert...
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Eternal Recurrence: Revenge (1989)
To view Revenge click here. Revenge (1989) concerns a vengeance that cannot be contained by time. It floats through the centuries, traveling from 17th century Korea to 20th century Sakhalin Island, a...
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If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out
To view Harold and Maude click here. Anyone who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s probably remembers their first viewing of Harold and Maude (1971). For me it came in the early days of cable TV when...
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Untapped Fears: The Plumber (1979)
To view The Plumber click here. Our fears take many forms. I was born and (mostly) raised in California so it’s probably not surprising that I fear natural disasters such as earthquakes and wildfires,...
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From Hot Wax to the Silver Screen: Quadrophenia (1979)
To view Quadrophenia click here. Since film got sound, filmmakers have been making musicals. And much of the time the inspiration was the music itself. That is to say, while many musicals are composed...
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The Bleak Reality of William Wyler’s DEAD END (1937)
To view Dead End click here. Following the success of These Three and the film adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s Dodsworth (written about here and here), both released in 1936, William Wyler brought...
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The Decline of Western Civilization (1981)
To view The Decline of Western Civilization click here. To view The Decline of Western Civilization, Part III click here. It was in January of 2001 while I was talking to Ozzy Osbourne about David...
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Revisiting On the Waterfront (1954)
To view On the Waterfront click here. In a limited engagement on FilmStruck, Criterion is streaming On the Waterfront (1954) through October 31. The offer also includes Criterion’s extensive bonus...
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The Swashbuckling Lover: Bardelys the Magnificent (1926)
To view Bardelys the Magnificent click here. By 1926 director King Vidor and star John Gilbert were one of MGM’s most bankable duos, thanks to the massive success of their WWI drama The Big Parade...
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A Roar, Not a Whimper: The Wind and the Lion (1975)
To view The Wind and the Lion click here. A stunning epic adventure that would have been a massive hit had it been released ten years earlier, The Wind and the Lion (1975) is one of those movies I...
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Taking Issue with A Boy and His Dog (1975)
A guest post provided by former TCM intern, Alexandra Greenway. To view A Boy and His Dog click here. A Boy and His Dog follows 18-year-old Vic (Don Johnson) and his telepathic dog, Blood (voiced by...
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“He Don’t Believe in Anything” – Mr. Freedom
To view Mr. Freedom click here. There’s a scene in Arthur Miller’s American Clock, a lesser known and not very successful later work of his, where a father and son go to a government office during the...
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William Wyler’s Wuthering Heights (’39)
To view Wuthering Heights click here. Following the success of Dead End (written about here) in 1937, director William Wyler headed over to Warner Bros. to direct Jezebel (1938), a romantic drama set...
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