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. John Ford. Starring Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Vera Miles The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a real giveaway, up there with classics like The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Not only that, but the movie makes it fairly clear what happens to its main characters before we even know they’re the… Read More The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
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: 7-5
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: 90-86
Dir. John Ford. Starring John Wayne, Ben Johnson, Maureen O’Hara In The Battle of Midway, John Ford appears to have won a bet he made with someone that he couldn’t fit every patriotic American song into a movie. Only a few minutes of the documentary are really about the battle itself; no small part of it… Read More Rio Grande (1950)
Dir. Laurent Bouzereau. I’ve spent some time thinking about what made Five Came Back so effective as a lens to view World War II, and at first I thought it was the subject matter. Entering this documentary and having little more prior knowledge than some vague understanding of John Ford and Frank Capra’s World War II service, I assumed that… Read More Five Came Back (2017)
Dir. John Ford. Starring John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Henry Brandon The diagetic portions of this movie begin with a surprisingly striking image: a woman stands in a doorway, black in the way Pierre-Auguste Renoir said a painting should never use black, her silhouette blocking the majestic view of the ostensibly Texan skyline. (It’s Monument Valley,… Read More The Searchers (1956)
Seeing Things Secondhand 