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10 memorable movie fathers
Movie dads, like everything and everyone else on the big screen, reflect their time. That’s why the all-knowing patriarchs of Life with Father (1947) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) in classic American cinema began to recede with the emergence of New Hollywood in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. Our relationships with movie fathers…
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The 10 best road-trip films
“I take the open road. Healthy, free, the world before me,” wrote the poet Walt Whitman, long before anyone in Hollywood even thought about shooting a road-trip movie. The road is a potent metaphor. It symbolizes growth, freedom, reinvention and escape––or just a place to get your kicks (if you’re on Route 66, anyway)––but the…
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The 10 best films about race in America
First, my disclaimer. I’m a white guy and, therefore, have a limited perspective on what it means to be anything other than a white guy in America. The “race issue” in the United States is a tidy phrase for an untidy reality. The original sins of the nation are the enslavement of Black Americans and the…
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The 10 best films about identity crises
Who am I? Questions surrounding one’s sense of self have long preoccupied the arts, but the theme is especially piquant in the movies. Characters are played by actors who are projected on screens that we then watch and interpret. With film itself built on layers of performance and illusion, it only follows that cinema is…
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The 20 best Pre-Code films
Handwringing over Hollywood is as old as Hollywood itself. In 1930, the movie studios acquiesced to religious and civic organizations and promised to clean up their act. The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), under the stewardship of former U.S. Postmaster General Will H. Hays, established the Motion Picture Production Code to set…
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The 10 best R-rated comedies
Let’s just say it: dirty jokes are pretty effing funny. The best R-rated comedies, however, are more than exercises in vulgarity. They’re happily transgressive, pushing past the boundaries of good taste and dragging the audience along with them. Laughter may be the best medicine, but sometimes adults need something stronger than aspirin. 10. The Hangover…
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The 10 best workplace films
For most adults, work consumes more waking hours than almost anything except sleep. Admittedly, not all of that time is spent working; some of it likely includes scrolling through TikTok or watching the second hand crawl toward quitting time (or so I’m told). Even so, the workplace occupies an enormous share of modern life—and provides…
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach
Let’s talk about movies.
