Movie Year Director Actor Actor Ranking They Live by Night 1948 Nicholas Ray Cathy O’Donnell Farley Granger 3 All That Heaven Allows 1955 Douglas Sirk Jane Wyman Rock Hudson 24 Cane River 1982 Horace B. Jenkins Richard Romain Tommye Myrick 54 My Best Girl 1927 Sam Taylor Mary Pickford Charles Rogers 62 The Crimson Kimono… Read More Better than AFI’s 100 Passions: Society Gets in the Way Cliché
Two sentences per movie. The last time I did a retro movie diary, I had three weeks to catch up on. Now I have…more than that. No sweat!
One of the Grantland legacies I’m fond of, although I’m sure the idea didn’t start there, is the championship belt (RIP Grantland, long live Barnwell and Hyden). The purpose is to go year by year and create a list of who’s at the top of some field, which is a deceptively simple task, and one… Read More Anglophone Director Championship Belt, 1918-2018
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)
The following is part of an overview of the top 100 American narrative fiction feature films, from my perspective. For an introduction to the project and an index of other entries in the series, click here. For a list of more than 800 films which I considered for the top 450 and my eligibility qualifications, click here.… Read More Better than AFI’s Top 100: 50-46
The following is part of an overview of the top 100 American narrative fiction feature films, from my perspective. For an introduction to the project, click here. For a list of more than 800 films which I considered for the top 450 and my eligibility qualifications, click here. And for a way to vote on what you think the top… Read More Better than AFI’s Top 100 (2017): 100-96
Dir. Douglas Sirk. Starring Lana Turner, Juanita Moore, Susan Kohner (Featured image links here.) Sarah Jane Johnson (Kohner) can trace her future in two directions. The first path keeps her with her loving, practically perfect mother, Annie (Moore). Annie’s friendship, which borders ungracefully on mistress/maid with a successful actress named Lora Meredith (Turner), will almost certainly… Read More Imitation of Life (1959)
Dir. Douglas Sirk. Starring Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead Cary Scott’s (Wyman) garbage children, Ned and Kay (William Reynolds and Gloria Talbott, respectively), are both in their early twenties during the events of the film. In 1955, I don’t think any but the most clairvoyant Americans would have foreseen the events in Vietnam, only the… Read More All That Heaven Allows (1955)
Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Starring Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin “You know Hitler?” “Hitler, yes.” Emmi (Mira) asks Ali (ben Salem) that question twice in this film. The first time, it’s the same night she’s met Ali. They’re sitting at her dinette maybe a couple of hours after they met for the… Read More Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
Seeing Things Secondhand 