Browsed by
Tag: classic movie

Suspense: Everything You’d Want From a Thriller.

Suspense: Everything You’d Want From a Thriller.

Released: July 1913 Directed by: Lois Weber, Phillips Smalley. Cast: Lois Weber, Valantine Paul, Sam Kaufman, Douglas Gerrard, and Lule Warrenton as the Maid. First time viewing. Suspense has everything you could want in a thriller. Tension, jeopardy, a villain without a conscience, a young mother in life threatening danger, a desperate husband trying to save his wife and baby, a car chase, trigger happy cops, sinister camera angles, nail-biting pacing, justice, a happy ending, and a maid who quits…

Read More Read More

Ministry of Fear: An Eccentric, Flawed Masterpiece.

Ministry of Fear: An Eccentric, Flawed Masterpiece.

Directed by: Fritz Lang Released: October 1944 Cast: Ray Milland, Marjorie Renolds, Carl Esmond, Hillary Brooke, Percy Waram, Dan Duryea, and Alan Napier as Dr. Forrester. Spoilers. There are a few. You could say Ministry of Fear is something of a flawed masterpiece. Simply put, Ministry of Fear is a wonderfully eccentric film where the climax can’t bear-up under the weight of the eccentricity. Just released from an insane asylum, Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) buys a train ticket to London….

Read More Read More

The Bedford Incident: In the Shadow of the Cold War.

The Bedford Incident: In the Shadow of the Cold War.

Released: November 1965 Directed by: James B. Harris Cast: Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, James MacArthur, Martin Balsam, Wally Cox, Eric Portman, Michael Kane, Gary Cockrell, Phil Brown, and Donald Sutherland as Hospitalman Nerney. Some spoilers. Cold War movies usually lurk in the shadows. The shadowy alleyways of East or West Berlin or an endless Scandinavian night. The Bedford Incident exists in the shadows of the bridge of the USS Bedford, a US Navy destroyer patrolling the Denmark Strait off the…

Read More Read More

A Matter of Life and Death: Life and Death and So Much More.

A Matter of Life and Death: Life and Death and So Much More.

Released: December 1946 Directed by: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger Cast: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Roger Livesey, Marius Goring, Robert Coote, Kathleen Byron, Richard Attenborough, Abraham Sofaer, and Raymond Massey as Abraham Farlan. First time viewing. A Matter of Life and Death is a movie about love, but it also about so much more. Life and death to be sure. The afterlife without theology to gum up the works, but rather humanity as a whole needing to embrace and begin…

Read More Read More

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….

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

The Strange Case of Joe Patroni: Part Three

The Strange Case of Joe Patroni: Part Three

By the end of Airport ’77 we cannot help but wonder if Joe Patroni is the only one to disappear into the Bermuda Triangle, along with all the carefully documented unanswered questions. Lord knows the Devil’s Triangle does not give up its secrets easily. The only thing new offered is Joe’s phantom company, Patroni’s Gently Used Airplane Parts and Stress Points. What was clear, Universal hit the jackpot again with another huge return on investment. Audiences were still hungry for…

Read More Read More

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: Merry Christmas 007

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: Merry Christmas 007

Released: December 1969 Directed by: Peter R. Hunt Cast: George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Gabriele Ferzetti, Ilse Steppat, Lois Maxwell, George Baker, Bernard Lee, Desmond Llewelyn. Yup, spoilers. Ernst Stavro Blofeld has no redeeming qualities, save one, he is not a quitter. Like his contemporary, Wile E. Coyote-Super Genius, he continues to plot, scheme, and execute said plots. His operative in Jamaca, Dr. No was charged with toppling U.S. missiles and failed. In a revenge, extortion scheme, Rosa Klebb…

Read More Read More

A Christmas Wish aka The Great Rupert

A Christmas Wish aka The Great Rupert

Released: March 1950 Directed by: Irving Pichel Cast: Jimmy Durante, Terry Moore, Tom Drake, Frank Orth, Sara Haden, Queenie Smith, Chick Chandler, Jimmy Conlin, Rupert the Squirrel. I’ve believed for a long time that squirrels are the dolphins of the backyard, and A Christmas Wish confirms that belief. Rupert the Squirrel is the most amazing squirrel I have ever seen. He not only dances, but he does a Scottish jig that would make any Highlander proud. He is an astute…

Read More Read More

Verified by MonsterInsights