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Kiss of Death: Tommy Udo- “I won’t give you the peel off a grape.”

Kiss of Death: Tommy Udo- “I won’t give you the peel off a grape.”

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Released: August 1947 Directed by: Henry Hathaway Cast: Victor Mature, Brian Donlevy, Coleen Gray, Richard Widmark, Taylor Holmes, Howard Smith, Karl Malden, Anthony Ross, Robert Adler, Rollin Bauer, Harry Bellaver, and Mildred Dunnock as Mrs. Rizzo. Spoilers? You betcha! In Kiss of Death, it’s appropriate that we first meet Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) in a New York City Courthouse holding cell. Muttering insults to the guards and befriending fellow cellmate Nick Bianco (Victor Mature). While Nick is tentative, Tommy sees…

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Captains of the Clouds: Hollywood Comes to Canada.

Captains of the Clouds: Hollywood Comes to Canada.

Released: February 1942 Directed by: Michael Curtiz Cast: James Cagney, Dennis Morgan, Brenda Marshall, Alan Hale, George Tobias, Reginald Gardiner, W.A.(Billy) Bishop, Reginald Denny, Russell Arms, Paul Cavanagh, and Clem Bevans as Sam ‘Store-Teeth’ Morrison. Being Canadian, I’m a little biased when it comes to Captains of the Clouds. Released in 1942, it is one of several Warner Brothers films produced during World War 2 that showcased the Allied contributions to the European war. Films like Edge of Darkness, Passage…

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Jump Cuts: More of My Letterboxd Reviews. Take Two

Jump Cuts: More of My Letterboxd Reviews. Take Two

A new batch of reviews from my Letterboxd account. These films were found on Tubi, Amazon Prime, Netflix, the Criterion Channel, and my personal collection. The only editing I’ve done is to correct some bad/awkward grammar. Letterboxd uses a 5-star rating system, which I will be including. The Quiet Earth (1985) Starring Bruno Lawrence, Alison Routledge, Anzac Wallace, Pete Smith, Tom Hyde, Norman Fletcher. Directed by Geoff Murphy. **** Zac (Bruno Lawrence) wakes up one morning, only to find everyone…

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Jump Cuts: A Collection of My LETTERBOXD Reviews. Take One.

Jump Cuts: A Collection of My LETTERBOXD Reviews. Take One.

For those of you who may not be familiar, Letterboxd is a movie app where you can keep track of, rate, and review the movies you watch. I’ve gotten into the habit of writing short reviews immediately following a movie I’ve just watched, sometimes while the closing credits are still rolling. Anyway, after going back and re-reading some of these nuggets of ‘cinematic insight’, I thought it might be fun to share some of my favorites. These films were found…

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Sweet Smell of Success. 1957.
Sweet Smell of Success: One Gift Right After Another.

Sweet Smell of Success: One Gift Right After Another.

Directed by: Alexander Mackendrick Released: July 1957 Cast: Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner, Sam Levene, Lawrence Dobkin, Barbara Nichols, Joe Frisco, Emile Meyer, Edith Atwater, Jeff Donnell, the Chico Hamilton Quintet, and Jay Adler as Manny Davis. Spoilers? Yup. If there is a better movie than Sweet Smell of Success, you’ll have to forgive me for not catching its name. I was too busy cheering. In the early 80s I watched a few essential films for the…

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Crime of Passion: A Film with Two Great Leads, Very Little Spark.

Crime of Passion: A Film with Two Great Leads, Very Little Spark.

Directed by: Gerd Oswald Released: January 1957 Cast: Barabra Stanwyck, Sterling Hayden, Raymond Burr, Fay Wray, Virginia Grey, Royal Dano, Robert Griffin, Dennis Cross, Jay Adler, and Stuart Whitman as Laboratory Technician. First-time viewing. Crime of Passion is a noir film that indeed begins with a crime of passion. Concludes with a crime of passion. But lacks spark, despite the performances of the two leads. Kathy Ferguson (Barbara Stanwyck) is a big time San Francisco columnist who is draw into…

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Masters of the Universe: A Step-by-Step Viewers Guide.

Masters of the Universe: A Step-by-Step Viewers Guide.

Directed by: Gary Goddard Released: August 1987 Cast: Dolph Lundgren, Frank Langella, Meg Foster, Bily Barty, Courteney Cox, Robert Duncan McNeill, Jon Cypher, Chelsea Field, James Tolkan, and Christina Pickles as Sorceress of Greyskull. First-time viewing. A Disclaimer of Sorts: I went into Masters of the Universe almost completely blind. I have some very basic knowledge of the cartoon series. The few episodes I’ve seen my focus was on Skeletor, possibly one of the most incompetent, most watchable super villains…

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The Cameraman: The Art of Unrequited Love.

The Cameraman: The Art of Unrequited Love.

Released: September 1928 Directed by: Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton Cast: Buster Keaton, Marceline Day, Harold Goodwin, Sidney Stacey, Harry Gribbon, Edward Brophy, Josephine the Monkey, and Vernon Dent as Man in Tight Bathing Suit. Love is frequently a theme of Buster Keaton’s films. Love of the unrequited variety, you know, loneliness, rejection, pain, physical and mental, and the ever popular little guy getting sand kicked in his face. The Cameraman is one such picture, and my favorite of Mr….

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Logan’s Run: The Utopian Sequel to Soylent Green?

Logan’s Run: The Utopian Sequel to Soylent Green?

Released: June 1976 Directed by: Michael Anderson Cast: Michael York, Jenny Agutter, Richard Jordan, Roscoe Lee Browne, Farrah Fawcett-Majors, and Peter Ustinov as Old Man. By 2274, humanity had overcome the over-population, starvation, and cataclysmic civilization destroying conflicts of the 2020s. Earth’s population now live in isolated domed mega-utopias, where all their needs are met. Gone are the days of feasting on Soylent Green, stepping over one another just to get down a flight of stairs, or being dumped into…

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Soylent Green: “How Did We Come to This?”

Soylent Green: “How Did We Come to This?”

Directed by: Richard Fleischer Released: April 1973 Cast: Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, Chuck Connors, Brock Peters, Paula Kelly, Joseph Cotton, Edward G. Robinson as Solomon Roth. As we sit here, in 2024, society is in rough shape. The gap between the wealthy and poor is ever increasing, homelessness is at an all-time high, governments and politicians are more interested in their own personal gain over the need of the people they were elected to serve, the gap between government and…

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