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!
Decent Stuff: “3:10 to Yuma”
A big sky above a stagecoach moving across the plain in a true long shot---now this is a title sequence for a Western---and this particular Western is the original 3:10 to Yuma (1957), not the Aughts remake. This is the good one, adeptly directed by Delmer Daves and...
“Belle de Jour” Means Daytime Beauty
Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour (1967) is so bad it's riveting. A French woman (Catherine Deneuve) happily married but sexually unresponsive to her husband gradually becomes, of all things, a daytime prostitute at a brothel. Repelling kinkiness is shown, but there is...
Angel And The Duke: The Movie, “Angel and the Badman”
John Wayne resists being entirely convincing as a badman (a compound word?) in the 1947 Western, Angel and the Badman. This is the first movie Wayne produced, and he wanted it to have capital acting, but he himself does not really fill the bill. Gail Russell does,...
Bound For Heaven: “Mouchette” (A Second Review)
There is no repentance of sin in Robert Bresson's Mouchette (1967), though there should be. Plus there is an old woman, a layer-out of the dead, who talks like a pagan. Yet it is the Christianity of Georges Bernanos, on whose novel this film is based (and faithful...
Comedy, Come Back!: The 1961 “Lover Come Back”
Quite a bevy of characters shows up in Lover Come Back (1961), a Rock Hudson-Doris Day farce. There is a highly competitive (and rightly so) female professional at an advertising agency (Day), a smart but unprincipled Lothario (Hudson), a top-tier insecure neurotic...
Thrashing Out: The Film, “Fist in His Pocket”
In 1965, with Fist in His Pocket, Italy's Marco Bellocchio proved he was an able film artist. His movie is about a wretched family living wretched lives. They, the people, are morally and existentially wretched: One of them (Lou Castel) is an epileptic who dabbles...
“Never Felt A Wound”: Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet”
The famous 1968 Romeo and Juliet, by Franco Zeffirelli, tries too hard in its cinematic realization. Much is overdone, such as the loathsome performance of John McEnery as Mercutio; and, withal, too much of the text is cut. The killing of Paris, for example. I agree...
Yet Another Review Of “Lady Bird”
There is excellent work from actors Laurie Metcalf, Lois Smith (as a nun) and Saoirse Ronan in Greta Gerwig's movie, Lady Bird (2017), and pretty appealing work from Gerwig as well. Ronan enacts "Lady Bird," or Christine, McPherson, an adolescent girl who attends a...
From The Maker Of “Pillow Talk”: The Movie, “Boys’ Night Out”
A top-notch comedy, Boys' Night Out (1962) proffers three corrupt married men who want an out-of-town pad where they can be serviced by a willing girl. Under protest, a bachelor friend played by James Garner finds for the men both the pad and the girl (Kim Novak),...
