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“First Look” at the Museum of the Moving Image
Movies are hard to see. That statement feels false, what with films all around you, available to stream at a keystroke. But distribution is a weird, half-hazard thing, a pseudo-science that pretends...
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This week on TCM Underground: MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE (1986)
Humanity falls before an onslaught of electronic devices — from pinball machines to 18-wheel trucks — while staff and customers at a roadside diner make an unplugged stand against the rise of the...
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Nippon Noir: I AM WAITING (1957)
In recent years I’ve seen a critical push to apply familiar terms like Film Noir to all manner of Japanese crime films made during the 1950s and 60s. The term has even been applied to the culturally...
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Memories of Movies
When I was in my teens and twenties, with the advent of cable and VHS, I watched about two or three movies a day, usually at night after work or school, depending on where I was in life. One after...
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Make Spit Takes, Not War
What’s wrong with comedies? I don’t mean that as in, “why aren’t today’s comedies as good as the olden days?” Because that’s nonsense—the breadth and depth of innovative, hilarious comedy being done...
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Best Director: Let’s Settle This Once And For All
Peter Suderman of Reason.com writing on the lack of a nomination for Selma director Ava Duvernay, notes, “it’s always a little bit weird to see a movie nominated in the Best Picture category but not...
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Before Denby, Ebert, Sarris, and Kael, There Was James Agee
So many faceless movie reviewers with forgettable names and interchangeable writing “styles” populate the Internet that it is hard to imagine a time when reviews were penned by established authors,...
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Comedy of Remarriage: The Moon’s Our Home (1936)
Struggling stage actors Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan were married on December 25, 1931. They divorced two months later. In 1936, Fonda and Sullavan were both burgeoning movie stars, and appeared...
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This week on TCM Underground: VIGILANTE (1983)
When his wife and son are brutalized by thugs and a corrupt criminal justice system puts the perpetrators back on the street, a family man turns vigilante to find some measure of bloody justice. Cast:...
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Bonus: Mike Malloy’s EUROCRIME! reviewed!
I know a fair bit about the history of Italy post-World War II, of its painful recovery, it’s economic boom, and of its sad decline amid the infamous “Days of Lead,” but Mike Malloy’s documentary...
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Robert Redford & Sydney Pollack: A Creative Partnership
“In a way, he was like the country he lived in. Everything came too easily to him, but at least he knew it.” – from THE WAY WE WERE, scripted by Arthur Laurents It’s easy to assume that this memorable...
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Acting Well Beyond Your Age
Tonight on TCM, Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys airs, a comedy about two old Vaudeville performers getting back together for a televised benefit. One of those performers is played by George Burns who,...
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The wrong week to quit sniffing glue
When you talk about “classic cinema” you talk about motion pictures that influenced the culture. Films that inspired other films, established careers, wormed their way into the memories of audiences,...
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A Forgotten Film to Remember: Eyes in the Night
Tomorrow, January 27, TCM will celebrate Donna Reed’s 94th birthday by showing a selection of nine early films, including her first feature The Get-Away. My favorite film on the list is the crime...
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Cowgirl Diplomacy: Woman They Almost Lynched (1953)
Woman They Almost Lynched is a funhouse Western, exaggerating and undermining the genre’s familiar tropes. Its Civil War border town is named Border City, with the line between North and South cut...
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This week on TCM Underground: TWICE UPON A TIME (1983)
In the mythical city of Din, two garbagemen try to stop an evil despot from plaguing the citizenry with eternal nightmares. Cast: Lorenzo Music (Ralph, the All Purpose Animal), Marshall Effron...
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End of an Era: THE PHANTOM OF HOLLYWOOD (1974)
“I am not among your ruins. I live in a world of castles, of palaces and mansions. In dreams! My world is invulnerable to your machines.” – Jack Cassidy aka the Phantom of Hollywood It’s 1974 and one...
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There’s This One Scene…
The great thing about the movies (and books, music, theater, and literature) is that you don’t have to enjoy the whole work to take something away from it. It certainly helps if you like the whole...
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Silent Running
Let’s stipulate that Silent Running was not Joan Baez’ best single. I’m not a Baez fan—that era of folksy music isn’t my thing, but somehow Silent Running and its B-side Rejoice in the Sun manage to be...
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Silent Acting
No, no, not silent movie acting (who do I look like, David Kalat?*), acting without words. Those moments in performances when an actor does more, much more, with a look or a reaction than they could...
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