Dir. Henry King. Starring Gregory Peck, Millard Mitchell, Skip Homeier Surely no other film makes as much dramatic hay with the insult “Mister Frazzlebottom” as The Gunfighter does. With terrible efficiency, Jimmy Ringo (Peck) makes quick work of Eddie (Richard Jaeckel), a loudmouth southwesterner with, given his death, an ironic yen for immortality. Eddie fancies… Read More The Gunfighter (1950)
Dir. John Huston. Starring Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, Leo Genn It’s easier for me at least to identify single choices in form, structure, performance, and so on which torpedo a movie rather than elevate it. In Moby Dick, there’s an all-timer of a decision which elevates the movie to mysterious heights, and that is the… Read More Moby Dick (1956)
To see my running list of the hundred greatest movie stars in American film history, click here All stars are listed with a single film which is particularly important, though not exclusively so, to understanding what makes them vital to American movies. 45) Gene Hackman / Key film – Hoosiers Leading men can be many… Read More Better than AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars: 41-45
The following is from my series of Oscar Best Picture rankings, as well as my strongly worded suggestions for what should have won from among the nominees. For an introduction to the project, click here. For a way to vote on some Oscar-related ideas, click here. If I’ve written a review on any of the… Read More Better than the Oscars: 65-61
The following is from my series of Oscar Best Picture rankings, as well as my strongly worded suggestions for what should have won from among the nominees. For an introduction to the project, click here. For a way to vote on some Oscar-related ideas, click here. If I’ve written a review on any of the… Read More Better than the Oscars: 75-71
Dir. J. Lee Thompson. Starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn At long last, it’s nearly the moment to strike. A small but impressive team of Allied commandos have squeezed, even by the standards of World War II, a year’s work into less than a week. Taking a dilapidated fishing boat through the Aegean, they… Read More The Guns of Navarone (1961)
Dir. Martin Scorsese. Starring Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, Juliette Lewis Among its top ten grossing films in the colorfully named genre “Thriller – Psycho/Stalker/Blank from Hell,” Box Office Mojo places seven of them between 1987 and 1994. Cape Fear is not even the highest grossing film of its ilk from 1991; Sleeping with the… Read More Cape Fear (1991)
There are some books that I read over and over again. From the time I was in sixth grade up into my last year of college, I read To Kill a Mockingbird at least twice a year. (I’ll be citing the edition that is yellow and a little torn beyond its years: it’s the first… Read More Villainous Age in Harper Lee’s “Oeuvre”
Seeing Things Secondhand 