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!
Saucering To A “Forbidden Planet”
For the first hour and 15 minutes, Forbidden Planet (1956) holds up well as science fiction, then falls apart with its Id-as-monster plot device. Oh well. It is still a curious entertainment proffering a familiar-looking robot and those electronic tonalities on the...
Welcome To The IMF – “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation”
Again there is an absurd plot, but at least it's fairly interesting. However, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015) succeeds on the strength of its utterly captivating adventure set pieces. A terrorist mastermind's silly overkill in an opera-house assassination...
Aiming At “The Stalking Moon” (A 1968 Flick)
Directed by Robert Mulligan, The Stalking Moon (1968) is a rough-hewn Western wherein a white woman (Eva Marie Saint) kidnapped long ago by the Apaches, and now rescued, struggles to keep the Indian father of her half-Indian son from taking the boy away. Helping her...
Goodbye To Personhood: “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (The Films of Don Siegel #4)
To have one's mind taken away is to lose one's personhood. This is what happens to the people of Santa Mira as the outer space body snatchers do their demonic possessing in Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955). Once the bodies are snatched, the people...
“This Is Spinal Tap,” Trashy Music And All
Without harshness This Is Spinal Tap (1984) satirizes hard rock musicians: the few who make up the British band Spinal Tap are blokes with very little going for them. Rob Reiner's modest film is a mockumentary, still as funny as ever, with dandy cameos by Fran...
On American Film Several Decades Ago
It's a pity that American movies declined in quality in 1975 and did not recover at all until the Nineties. Granted, they were not much better during the Sixties, but the years '70 to '74, for all the consistently adult material, told a somewhat different story. To...
A Taiwanese Masterpiece: “Eat Drink Man Woman”
From Taiwan, in 1994, came Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman, whose title might betoken a loopy comedy; but, no, the film is merely a serious comedy, or comedy-drama, not a loopy one. The four-word expression refers to food and sex, and it may well occur to us that in...
The Movie, “Naked City” (1948): What A Canvas!
It is post-World War II, in 1948, and New York City marches on, busy and packed with the citizens. Jules Dassin's Naked City is the most urban movie I've ever seen, giving Serpico and An Unmarried Woman (you're so Manhattan, girlfriend!) a run for their money partly...
From Public Police Work To “Private Hell 36” (The Films of Don Siegel #3)
I suppose that at bottom Private Hell 36 (1954) is Ida Lupino's film. Don Siegel directed it, but Lupino starred in and co-wrote it---originally for the screen, hooray!---with Collier Young. She plays a bar singer who falls for a now admirable, now dirty cop (Steve...
