It’s kind of a shock to realize a zany movie that came out when you were a teenager is now considered one of the great enduring cinema classics. That’s particularly true when said movie is
Joan Crawford was a rarity among Hollywood’s glamorous Golden Age stars. She wasn’t afraid to play, well, shall we say, aggressive characters. You know, calculating, two-faced characters. Hypocritical, double-dealing characters. Okay, I’ll just say it. She wasn’t afraid
I’m not much of a comic fan so, consequently, film adaptations with comic book characters don’t do much for me. That being said, I really liked 2008’s Batman epic The Dark Knight, maybe because it comes
Screwball comedy is a fragile genre. If you have wacky characters, you need a realistic scenario, and vice versa. If both the characters and the story are bizarre, there’s nothing for the audience to cling
As an experiment, one year I watched only holiday movies between Thanksgiving and Christmas (Except for one. I really need a frickin’ break … from all that … frickin’ joy). A new one to me
It was a night for another made-it-this-far-without-seeing-it-before movie, the 1949 film version of the Broadway hit On the Town, directed by Gene Kelly (who also choreographed and played one of the leads) and Stanley Donen. While just fine, even quite good
I binged all five episodes of the dramatic-bio series Halston in one sitting, which, I guess, should tell you I liked it enough to keep pushing forward. And I certainly did. The Netflix miniseries, exploring the famed fashion designer’s
When I sat down to watch 1964’s The Earth Dies Screaming I naturally thought I was going to see a schlocky sci-fi stinker. Surprisingly, this British production is stylish, atmospheric, and spooky, even thought provoking, despite a
Rewatching director John Huston’s 1951 masterpiece, The African Queen, which I hadn’t seen in a very long time, I discovered it not only holds up, but looks like it could have been filmed yesterday. Almost nothing about it
Spike Lee’s spectacular filming of the Broadway production of David Byrne’s American Utopia is the perfect argument for Byrne’s genius status. While he is clearly the main draw here, performing songs from both his days with the ground-breaking New-Wave band The
A rainy afternoon means it’s classic movie time. Today it was the Marx Brothers starring in 1933’s zany and biting Duck Soup. Many people consider this to be the brilliant comedy team’s finest film, and I certainly
Sometimes when a movie is utterly original, and executed with an abundance of affection and fun, it becomes irresistible. 2019’s romance-comedy-fantasy-musical, Yesterday is one of those movies. An unsuccessful musician experiences a bizarre blip in
Considered the last of the great Universal horror films, the moist 1954 classic Creature from the Black Lagoon, originally filmed in 3-D, involves scientists exploring a swamp, a romantic triangle amongst those explorers, and the mysterious
I decided to catch up with almost everybody else in the world and watched all six seasons of Downton Abbey in a span of two months. I think my overall reaction is my own fault,
You know those movies you’ve wanted to see for years but for whatever reason you can’t find them, and then when you finally do, you’re terribly disappointed? That is not the case with 1955’s The
I hadn’t seen it since I sat in a theatre in 1986, so I figured why not? Rewatching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I was surprised I found it less laugh-out-loud funny than I remembered, but
