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Director Jacques Tourneur didn’t make many movies and is largely forgotten today, but he has a cult following of which I am a part. He made horror films such as “I Walked with a Zombie”, film noirs such as “Out of the Past” and films that exist somewhere in between, such as 1957′s suspensful and [...]
Archive for the ‘Film’ Category
December 30th, 2011
Category: Film
As the holiday season is still upon us, let me follow up last week’s recommendation of A Christmas Story with Kenneth Branagh’s 1992 film Peter’s Friends. Sometimes glibly dismissed as a “British knockoff of The Big Chill” it is in fact superior in most respects to that film (which not incidentally was itself based on [...]
December 23rd, 2011
Category: Film
Some mediocre films earn a reputation as “American Classics” entirely because the producers and marketers (or the critics and other members of the chattering class) have so declared them, and the rest of us are cowed into submission. But sometimes a movie attains this status honestly by slowly and steadily building a following because it [...]
December 16th, 2011
Last week, I recommended Flirting, in which sadistic masters torment the students in a boys’ school. This week, the tables are turned, as new teacher John Ebony (David Hemmings) and his wife Silvia (Carolyn Seymour) are terrorized by the fifth form from hell. The last three students on the class roll are “Unman, Wittering and [...]
December 15th, 2011
Category: Film, Psychology
In my post earlier today, I cited Paul Newman as an example of a successful artist who managed not to let all the ego-stroking go to his head. Later I remembered this very nice tribute by David Letterman that you will enjoy if you are a Newman fan. My favorite Newman quote: When he was [...]
December 9th, 2011
Category: Film
Adolescence includes aches (loneliness, alienation from adults, sexual longing) and joys (first love, treasured friendship and music). Few films have portrayed both classes of teenage experience as warmly and intelligently as the 1991 Australian film “Flirting”. Due to an execrable U.S. advertising campaign, which misrepresented the film as a sniggering teen sex comedy from “those [...]
December 7th, 2011
Christopher Howse has written a hilariously cranky, quintessentially British indictment of “Poet’s Corner” in Westminster Abbey. There, the humble great lie forever next to the mediocre, many of whom had crass, fame-seeking survivors. Although in truth, they don’t even all lie there as some of the slabs are just memorials to people buried in whole [...]
December 2nd, 2011
Category: Film
Following the success of his low-budget films “That Sinking Feeling” and “Gregory’s Girl”, Scottish film maker Bill Forsyth had the adjective “quirky” hung on him by critics, and it stuck. But there’s a nicer way to describe this talented writer-director’s output: Sweet, original and offbeat. For me, no film in Forsyth’s career better illustrates those [...]
November 25th, 2011
Category: Film
British film director John “Frenzy” Mackenzie passed away a few months ago, so honor the man and enjoy yourself at the same time by watching his best film: 1980′s thrilling, brutal “The Long Good Friday”. Many American viewers struggle with the opening scenes of this film about organized crime in London because the slang comes [...]
November 19th, 2011
Category: Film
Filmmakers Steve James and Peter Gilbert started with the idea of making a 30 minute TV show about kids playing basketball at an urban playground. Instead they got pulled into the lives of two remarkable families and you will be too by the astounding 1994 documentary “Hoop Dreams”. The film follows two African-American basketball players [...]
