Category: Film

  • The Awful Truth (1937)

    The centerpiece of this screwball comedy still sparkles as brilliantly as it did in 1937, that being the embattled married couple of Jerry and Lucy Wariner, played by Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. Oklahoma viewers, however, might be slightly more interested by Ralph Bellamy as the movie’s requisite dope, a rich Oklahoma oilman named Dan.…

  • Topaz (1969)

    The late 1960s marked something of a downslide for Alfred Hitchcock. There is speculation about what prompted his string of disappointments. Perhaps the slow demise of the studio system left the master of suspense rudderless. Hitchcock scholar Donald Spoto contended in his 1983 biography, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock, that…

  • The Ritchie Boys (2004)

    One of the pleasures of little-known documentaries is learning about something wholly new and unexpected. After Ken Burns’ exhaustive documentary on World War II, I figured there weren’t too many more WW2 stories still waiting to be unearthed. The Ritchie Boys happily proved me wrong. This straightforward doc tells the tale of a group of…

  • Year by year: My faves of the 2010s

    Will the 2010s be the last hurrah for the full-fledged movie theater-going experience? Streaming and home devices were certainly changing habits before COVID decimated theaters. There is some reason for optimism, thankfully. At any rate, this decade was an eclectic one… 2010: 10. Four Lions, director: Chris Morris9. The Fighter, director: David O. Russell8. Let…

  • The Tree of Life (2011)

    Not many pictures are so flat-out ballsy as to interrupt its principal narrative in order to reveal the origin of the cosmos. But Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life does just that. This coming-of-age story is ambitious and audacious, bold and bewildering. It is 2001 with a Texas twang. It is amazing. That doesn’t mean…

  • Year by year: My faves of the 1970s

    Hollywood’s second golden age saw the emergence of film school influences, cultural upheaval, experimentation, and a European art-house sensibility. Conversely, the decade also saw the birth of the blockbuster. With apologies to a podcast of the same name, these are (along with the 1980s) the movies that made me. 1970: 10. The Landlord, director: Hal…

  • The Hustler (1961)

    The Hustler is a straightforward morality play, but told with a lean intensity that pushes it into the realm of classic cinema. It helped that the 1961 picture featured a slew of great acting performances, particularly a superstar-making turn by Paul Newman. Based on a 1959 novel by Walter Tevis, The Hustler follows Fast Eddie…

  • The Social Network (2010)

    As the boy wonder who invented Facebook in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg was the world’s youngest-ever, self-made billionaire. He was also, at least according to The Social Network, a bona fide genius whose brilliance was matched by a cruelty borne of insecurity and resentment. And this deeply ambivalent portrait of Zuckerberg was in 2010, predating what…