Dir. Clarence Brown. Starring Mickey Rooney, James Craig, Frank Morgan I enter ninety percent of the movies I watch with an almost a ludicrous amount of optimism. I want them to surprise me and move me; at least once a week, I think to myself as I start a movie, “Maybe this will be the… Read More The Human Comedy (1943)
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. 80) Olivia de Havilland / Key film – The Heiress She was born… Read More Better than AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars: 76-80
To see what interests me about the Andy Hardy movies (with apologies to the rest of his family) and to get some broader thoughts on them, you can follow this link. You can also find this list with so many fewer words at my Letterboxd. It goes without saying that there are moderate to serious… Read More The Andy Hardy Movies: Ranking
I have a book I’ve been terribly fond of called Our Times: An Illustrated History of the 20th Century. A little disappointingly, it only goes up to the mid-1990s, but otherwise I can’t fault the book, which has been my introduction over the past fifteen years and more to scores of culturally relevant moments, texts,… Read More The Andy Hardy Movies: Introduction
Seeing Things Secondhand 