Dir. David Lean. Starring Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond In Reds, Gene O’Neill makes a comment critical of Louise Bryant’s performance in some rehearsals for a play he’s written which she’s performing in. “You’re supposed to be searching for your soul, not an ashtray,” he sneers at her. Blithe Spirit has much the same… Read More Blithe Spirit (1945)
Dir. John Ford. Starring John Wayne, John Agar, Ben Johnson She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is a better synopsis than a movie, which is hardly an uncommon problem for a movie, but rarely has that been more disappointing for me as a viewer. In practice, it makes for a lumpy flick without much feel for when… Read More She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
Dir. Douglas Sirk. Starring Robert Stack, Lauren Bacall, Rock Hudson Written on the Wind is stuck in a really strange place for a movie. It chips at the very limits of frankness and decency for its time period, but to work well it has to go much further than all that 1956 could allow. The story… Read More Written on the Wind (1956)
Dir. John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy. Starring Henry Fonda, William Powell, Jack Lemmon Roberts (Fonda) has just traded his chance to get into the war and away from the dyspeptic tyranny of his commanding officer, Morton (James Cagney). Roberts, a onetime medical student who volunteered for the war instead of finishing his degree, is an… Read More Mister Roberts (1955)
Dir. George Stevens. Starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters In a movie that frequently sits on Montgomery Clift emoting – a very good choice, that – and lingers on closeups of Elizabeth Taylor, the most important player is Shelley Winters, the patron saint of women who want things too much and never can take… Read More A Place in the Sun (1951)
Dir. Ron Clements and John Musker. Starring Auli’i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Rachel House. After watching Zootopia eight or nine months ago, I thought that Disney movies were starting to stick to their claim outside musicals. After watching Moana, the latest entry to the Disney canon, I’m more sure than ever that the best elements of… Read More Moana (2016)
Dir. Cy Endfield. Starring Stanley Baker, Michael Caine, Nigel Green Just about everything has contradictions at its heart if you dig enough, but Zulu wears that contradiction at its most surface level. In 2017, it’s a movie fraught with the complications we attach to the burgeoning postcolonial period which also bears strong and obvious similarities… Read More Zulu (1964)
Dir. Christopher Nolan. Starring Fionn Whitehead, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy Spoilers follow Dunkirk is bent on undoing its emotional work through its structure. The movie is already bound, even at a week old, to reach Memento levels of discussion of its timeline. Three plots intersect over the course of the film. One focuses on a… Read More Dunkirk (2017)
Dir. Vincente Minnelli. Starring Judy Garland, Lucille Bremer, Leon Ames Meet Me in St. Louis is not my musical cup of tea. It belongs to that old-fashioned, basically extinct form of movie musical in which the songs exist as ditties to hum while leaving the theater and as future sheet music, not as vehicles to… Read More Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Dir. Dario Argento. Starring Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Alida Valli Suspiria is what you’d get if Michael Powell and John Carpenter were forced to do a movie together, combining stunning color with marvelously eerie settings. Like the best of Powell’s work, a good but somewhat outmatched woman is at the center of the movie; like… Read More Suspiria (1977)
Seeing Things Secondhand 