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10 memorable movie teachers
Typically there isn’t much middle ground when it comes to teachers in the movies. Either they are inspirational heroes or tyrannical monsters. The template for the former came with 1939’s Goodbye Mr. Chips, in which Robert Donat played the eponymous teacher with considerable warmth (and aging makeup). There is one trait onscreen teachers tend to…
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The 20 best hangout movies
Sometimes you just want to be with a film. Quentin Tarantino is often credited with popularizing the term “hangout movie” back in a New Yorker profile where he referenced the 1959 western Rio Bravo (see #6 below). What makes a good hangout movie? Character, camaraderie and vibe supersede plot and reward repeat viewings. Some filmmakers…
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The 10 best films about summer
With all due respect to the four seasons, there is a reason summer lends itself to so many memorable movies, books and songs. The long days, blazing heat and languorous pace are entrenched in nostalgia. And for whatever reason, summer has come to embody freedom and limitless possibility. It is a time for vacations and…
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The 10 best haunted-house movies
Creaking floors, hidden passageways, strange sounds, maybe a ghost or 13 … who doesn’t love a juicy haunted-house story? Cinema quickly jumped on the genre with adaptations of literary works, two of the earliest and most notable silents being 1927’s The Cat and the Canary and 1928’s The Fall of the House of Usher. The…
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The 10 best movies about sex workers
The movies have come a long way since the days of the “hooker with a heart of gold” archetype that populated westerns and gangster flicks. Sex workers have been a mainstay of film, but their treatment has transformed dramatically over decades. World cinema’s examination of sex workers has been more realistic and ambiguous than that…
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The 10 best movies about the theater
When Shakespeare wrote, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” the guy was really onto something. Not only is the theater an obvious and irresistible microcosm for life, but it lends itself to great drama and conflict: naked ambition, professional rivalries, the hunger for applause. Pre-Code Hollywood understood the…
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The 15 best film noir
Film noir didn’t know it was film noir. French critics coined the term after World War II to describe a cycle of American crime pictures steeped in shadow and cynicism, but the filmmakers themselves were simply reflecting a changed world. Drawing on the starkness of German Expressionism, the films traded in hard contrasts: light and…
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The 10 best films about voyeurism
In cinema, where we watch characters who don’t know they are being watched, voyeurism is a feature and not a bug. It isn’t surprising, then, that movies often explore the implications of being a voyeur. Some filmmakers, particularly Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma, have made it a cornerstone of their works. “When you’re watching…
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach
Let’s talk about movies.
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 