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Reel Presidents: Lincoln the Man, the Politician, and the Vampire Hunter
For my last in a series on movie presidents, I return to the cinematic interpretations of the life and career of Abraham Lincoln for a look at the major biopics. The biopics are not a window into...
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Two’s A Crowd: The Whole Town’s Talking (1935)
In an early Christmas present, the Museum of the Moving Image screened a 35mm print of John Ford’s unaccountably hard-to-see The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) this past Saturday. Unavailable on home...
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One More Sad Song: Ragtime
Ragtime was released in 1981 to great fanfare. The 1975 novel was a bestseller and everyone wanted to see a big budget movie adaptation of the sprawling epic that takes the lives of one American...
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Spy Games: Recalling DR. NO
As I was getting ready to wrap-up my year long celebration of ‘60s spy films, I received something extraordinary in the mail; the new special issue of Cinema Retro’s Movie Classics magazine celebrating...
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SHOCKing stuffer!
It always feels like Christmas when a new issue of Shock Cinema comes out… and when one hits the stands just weeks before the Yuletide, well fa la la la la! I’ve beat this drum before and I’ll continue...
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We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket. It’s run by a big...
This is a season of traditions: those comforting rituals that we reiterate on an annual basis because no matter how small some of them may be (like the making of home-baked ginger snaps), they have...
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The Year in Documentaries
As I put together my Spring arthouse calendar lineup, I find it difficult to choose between all the great documentaries that are vying for attention. When the Academy recently listed the 15...
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Ten Films You Will Likely Never See: 2012
Each year, it becomes more difficult to pull together my top-ten list of “Films You Will Likely Never See,” which is my annual compilation of indies, documentaries, and mistreated Hollywood films. Part...
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Old Dogs, Older Tricks: The Wild Geese (1978)
For as long as there are aging matinee idols looking for a quick paycheck, there will be commando movies there to pay them. While the painfully self-conscious Expendables movies brought this...
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Been Down So Long: Across 110th Street (1972)
There must be a sense of relief when the artifice is finally stripped away from something long hidden from public view by all the ornamentation originally intended to make it more presentable, more...
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Reconsidering Aldo Ray: Chapter One
Back in September I set aside a block of time to watch TCM on the 25th. It was actor Aldo Ray’s birthday and in celebration TCM aired a batch of great Aldo Ray films including many of the WW2 dramas he...
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It’s the little things
I’ve been dreading this day since last Friday, which ended in the horrific aftermath of the violence in Sandy Hook, Connecticut — an act of unthinkable cruelty that left among the dead twenty children....
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It’s the End of the World and I Feel Fine
If you are reading this, then the world didn’t end. I never put any stock in that whole Mayan calendar silliness–if I had, I wouldn’t have spent any time writing this. And so it is with absolute...
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When High Noon Went High Concept: Outland (1981)
Sometime after the release of Star Wars, Hollywood had the bright idea to set everything in space because surely it was the space setting that was responsible for Star Wars success, right? Sometimes,...
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A Golden Age Christmas
On Christmas Eve, what could be more fun that holiday greetings from a glamorous movie star? During the Golden Age, when most stars were under contract to a studio, posing for publicity shots was part...
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Lives of the Ain’ts: It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
It’s A Wonderful Life has screened so often it has become cultural wallpaper, the background noise to tree decorating and on-line discount shopping. When it shifted into the public domain in 1974,...
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The Late Show and the Private Eye
Any good detective story focuses more on the detective than the story. If the detective, cop, private eye, what have you, is interesting then the plot will be interesting, while remaining oddly...
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Reconsidering Aldo Ray: Chapter Two
This is the second part of my two piece article on actor Aldo Ray. The first part can be found here. When THE MARRYING KIND was released in 1952 Aldo Ray was praised for his portrayal of a blue-collar...
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Sisters! Sisters! There were never such demonic sisters!
If the phrase “found after forty years” doesn’t excite you to your very marrow-meat, then stop reading now because we are no longer friends, you and I. All the rest… faaallll innn! This first...
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2012 DVD/Blu-Ray Wrap-Up
It is customary at year’s end to publish various “Best of” lists, to sum up The Year That Was as only a list can. In that spirit, I offer up my own Best Videos of 2012. These are the discs that...
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