Blog
These stories have been around a long time. Some of them I have updated. Many of them I haven’t. This started out when blogs were like, new!
“Scarlet Street” And Its Allure
For a long time the noir item, Scarlet Street (1945), is to me interestingly artificial and almost quaint as it focuses on an innocent played by Edward G. Robinson who falls in love with an alluring slugabed (Joan Bennett). Er, well, she's not just an alluring...
The Movie, “Fun Size”: Did You Say Fun?
Directed by Josh Schwartz, Fun Size (2012) is a sex comedy for teenagers. Not a good idea. It's "envelope-pushing" crud, and I put envelope-pushing in quotes because that's merely what the moviemakers believe it to be. In truth it's just a naughty nonentity. A...
I’ll Share About “The Secret Sharer” (The 1952 Short)
A '52 film adaptation of Joseph Conrad's story, "The Secret Sharer," offers James Mason as the newly commanding sea captain. He and director John Brahm do estimable work on the 48-minute effort, even if Mason may be too old for the role. Going against social...
Not A Failure: The Movie Version Of “The Light That Failed”
Dick Heldar in The Light That Failed, William Wellman's film of 1939, is a London painter who eventually goes blind long after receiving a head-slashing wound on the battlefield. A message is conveyed: There is a great deal that will not break a man, but war will....
The Film, “Juliet, Naked,” Covered
The recent picture Juliet, Naked (2018)---in which no one gets naked---is amusing and poignant and pleasantly, vividly acted by Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke. However, the story it tells is not as rich, or as interesting, as that in the Nick Hornby novel it derives...
Strolling Down “Avenue Montaigne” (A French Film)
Michel Garfinkiel used the phrase "classic French society" in the May 2007 issue of Commentary magazine. The sentence he wrote was: "Classic French society---the one that lasted from the revolution to the end of the 20th century, that is on display in the pages of...
Black And White In Paris: The Movie, “Paris Blues”
Adapted from a novel, Paris Blues (1961) is an American film set in Paris and slightly influenced by European cinema, but still very conventionally made. It concerns the lives and loves of two American jazz musicians, one white (Paul Newman) the other black (Sidney...
Are Mass Suicides Coming To America (And Elsewhere)?
Alzheimer's disease rages on. Tons of money will be needed for the care, at home and in nursing homes, for those afflicted with it. But this is not all that poses a problem. So many people in America, Europe and elsewhere have borne so few children that when they...
Have Plow, Will Travel: “The Covered Wagon” (1923)
To the Indians in James Cruze's The Covered Wagon, a 1923 silent film, the plow is a white man's weapon for devastating the land. But in truth the plow is a symbol for technological and material progress, progress those in the wagon caravans here, headed for Oregon,...
