Double Indemnity (1944) Film Review A+
“Double Indemnity” is the best of the three great film noirs of 1944, the others being “Laura” and “The Woman in the Window”. The three leads are superb as is Wilder’s direction.
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Category: Favorites
Laura (1944) Film Review A+
“Laura” is one of the classic film noirs. Gene Tierney is born and Clifton Webb becomes a star in his fifties. Haunting Raksin score.
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Shadow of a Doubt (1943) Film Review A+
Alfred Hitchcock, the cinema’s greatest director, made seven perfect films in which every shot, every camera move, every editing sequence is, well, perfect.
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Casablanca (1942-1943) Here’s Looking at you Kid! A+
Written on the fly by the fabulous Epstein twins and Howard Koch and directed by Michael Curtiz, this is one of the most romantic of all Hollywood movies.
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The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) Film Review A-
Monty Wooley delights as the impossibly pompous Sheridan Whiteside in William Keighley’s wonderful adaptation of the Kauffman/Hart play.
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The Maltese Falcon (1941) Film Review A-
The performances are there to savor with the great Mary Astor doing a superb turn as Bridget O’ Shaughnessy and the gay triumvirate bringing up the rear!
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Rebecca (1940) Film Review A+
“Rebecca”, marked the arrival in Hollywood of the man who was, or would eventually become, the greatest director in the history of cinema.
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The Wizard of Oz (1939) Film Review A-
She captured everyone’s heart, gay or straight. There is something vulnerable yet confident about her. And then there is that incredible voice!
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The Women (1939) Film Review A-
Every character in the movie, and every animal featured, was female. Great work by Crawford, Russell, Shearer and Mary Boland.
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Dodsworth (1936) Film Review A+
“Dodsworth”: William Wyler’s masterpiece, the best movie ever made about the fear of growing old. It was Wyler’s first Oscar nomination.
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Sylvia Scarlet (1935) Film Review B-
Both gay and trans, Sylvia/Sylvester set the bar impossibly high for years to come. One of the great financial disasters of the 1930s, it resulted in Hepburn being labelled box office poison.
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Top Hat (1935) Film Review A+
The Best of the Astaire-Rogers movies. Cinematography: David Abel. Production Design: Carroll Clark/Van Nest Polglase. Songs: Irving Berlin.
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The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Film Review A-
Director James Whale’s masterpiece is as close to Susan Sontag’s definition of high camp as the movies can deliver.
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Nicholas Musuraca: Master of Chiaroscuro
Nicholas Musuraca was a master of chiaroscuro. “The Spiral Staircase” was influenced the German Expressionist Cinema of the early 1920s. He photographed William Holden in Rouben Mamoulian’s adaptation of Clifford Odets “Golden Boy” with Barbara Stanwyck and Adolphe Menjou (above). It was Holden’s first starring role.
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Douglas Slocombe: Master Cinematographer
England’s master cinematographer of the sixties, his black and white lensing on Bryan Forbes’ “The L-Shaped Room” and Joseph Losey’s “The Servant” marks one of the high points of British cinema.
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Andrea Arnold Shorts: Wasp (2003) Dog (2001) Milk (1998) A+
A young mother (Natalie Press), who wants to rekindle an old relationship, neglects her four children for an evening.
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Haulout (2022) is a Masterpiece A+
A “haulout” is a place where walruses mate. Thanks to global warming, over 100,000 are packed into one tiny beach. The result is death on a horrific scale.
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Oppenheimer (2023) Twenty-Four Featured Scientists and the Actors Who Played Them
“Oppenheimer” has more Nobel Prize-winning characters than any other movie in Hollywood history. Who are the Actors who play them (and the spy Klaus Fuchs)?
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Jake Gyllenhaal Movies Ranked
He has made a dozen great films, including “Brokeback Mountain’, “Prisoners”, ‘Nightcrawler” , Lovely and Amazing”, “Jarhead”, “End of Watch”, and “Zodiac.”
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Eight Legendary Foreign Actresses Who Did Not Make It In Hollywood.
They were the darlings of the art house circuit. Their work in a language other than English is some of the greatest ever captured on film. But Hollywood…
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