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Lost Soul: The White Shadow (1924) and Alfred Hitchcock
The 2012 holiday season is also Alfred Hitchcock season, as studios have been looking for various ways to earn your master of suspense dollar. Universal released a brick of new Blu-Rays, HBO aired The...
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The Fire Within: Examining Life’s Darkest Hour
When movies deal with addiction and/or depression, there’s usually an abundance of histrionics put in play to drive the point home. Especially with addiction, the standard operating procedure seems to...
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Pieces of April… a Thanksgiving classic
Mind you, the category of Thanksgiving movies is slim enough that it makes this an easy call. A major American holiday customarily fobbed off as second string in films (or used as a first act in a...
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Spy Games: James Bond is back in SKYFALL (2012)
Warning! There are spoilers on the road ahead. When the first promotional photo for SKYFALL (2012) was released earlier this year it caused a minor uproar. It was an azure-tinted picture of Daniel...
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What are you thinking?
I’m interrupting my own train of thought today. I had intended to write a series of entries about pulp mysteries, with last week’s post about Dr. Mabuse leading into what was supposed to be this...
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Reel Presidents: From JFK to Millard Fillmore
Given Daniel Day Lewis’s heralded performance and the stellar work of a bevy of character actors, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln will undoubtedly sweep the acting categories during this awards season. The...
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Viva La Cava: The Half Naked Truth and Bed of Roses
One of the advantages of being home for the holidays are the huge gaps of time that open up when work and other daily annoyances fade from view. In the lazy hours surrounding Thanksgiving I hunkered...
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The Creeping Death of the Signature Film
I was scrolling online through movies to watch last week when I came upon Defending Your Life, written and directed by Albert Brooks. Even though I have it on DVD, I considered watching it right then...
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Yul Brynner, Photographer Extraordinaire
When Yul Brynner passed away in 1985 after battling cancer he was an accomplished performer with a Best Actor Oscar for his role in THE KING AND I (1956) and a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. His...
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Son of Dracula’s Daughter!
As the boxer Sonny Liston used to say, “Life a funny thing.” If you squint real hard you can see, to the right of Robert Osborne and below the goldenrod banner that reads “Movie Morlocks Bloggers,” my...
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Moira in Wonderland
“Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.” – Henry James Those words keep echoing in my mind whenever I think of my trip...
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Fantomas Strikes Back
Having brought up Dr. Mabuse recently, naturally my thoughts also flit to Fantômas. I had promised a while back that I would eventually address Andre Hunebelle’s 1960s Fantômas revival in this blog,...
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O Lucky U.S.!
Last night Alex Cox and I sat down for a private screening of O Lucky Man! (Lindsay Anderson, 1973). Alex had met both Anderson and Malcolm McDowell back in the seventies, and had even presented...
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Reel Presidents: Searching for Lincoln
As a follow-up to last week’s commentary on movie presidents, I intended to devote this week’s post to Abraham Lincoln, wrapping up with a discussion of the recent cinematic odes to the 16thpresident,...
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Movies On Demand: La Cava and Lumet
Clive Brook with a bottle in his hand is the most memorable image in Gregory La Cava’s Gallant Lady, an unusual melodrama that skews from an engaging women’s picture into an unrepentant celebration of...
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The Other Robert Wise Movie from 1951: The House on Telegraph Hill
There have been many instances where a famous director has two films released in the same year, with one becoming famous while the other exists in its shadow, half-remembered and never glorified. It’s...
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The Tabloid Troubles of Taylor & Burton
By now you’ve probably heard about LIZ & DICK (2012), a heavily publicized made for television movie produced by the Lifetime Network that dramatically retold the story of how Elizabeth Taylor and...
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My heroes had always been cowboys, or “Hey, westerns, remember me?”
I’m a horror guy. The older I get, the less I want to watch or write about any other kind of movie. It’s a juvenile, kneejerk response, and of course I will watch and enjoy other kinds of movies… but...
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Will the real Sherlock Holmes please stand up?
I’m going to wind up my exploration of pulp mysteries with the ultimate pulp detective of them all—Sherlock Holmes. And for any of my regular readers, the fact that I’ve chosen Zero Effect with Bill...
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After the Big One: The Ballad of Cable Hogue
Many filmmakers have several movies in their filmography before they hit it big. Howard Hawks had been directing for years before taking up the helm for The Dawn Patrol and even a couple more before...
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