It is very rare to run into a perfect movie…but it happens. That’s why it’s rare . And, it goes without saying, what is and isn’t perfect, what is nearly perfect, or a far cry form it, is subjective. Case in point: McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Everything…the screenplay. The cinematography. The acting. The soundtrack…yes, even […]
Sometimes, ever so rarely, a movie will come along from a junk genre, like exploitation–I’m thinking Texas Chainsaw Massacre here or, possibly, Wolf Creek–or slasher–Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street–or Blaxploitation–Across 110st Street and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, a movie that transcends it’s genre and wades into mainstream cinema. I have a soft spot for such […]
He may have left Poland because of persecution. It was tough to be Jewish in the latter part of the 19th Century, especially in Eastern Europe and its bordering areas of Central Europe. There were lots of tensions. To boil things down to the skeletal remains, a burgeoning movement of the moment was catching […]
It would be a mistake to view Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter through the lens of realism when it was created within the prism of a parable and filtered through the eyes and bad dreams of a child. Even so, its themes of sexual repression and “female hysteria”, misogyny, serial murder and gullibility […]
It takes a certain kind of faith to watch a movie. For the duration of, let’s say, an hour and thirty minutes or so we are asked to suspend skepticism and buy into an artistic vision. It is a contract, if you will, between us and the director and whether or not we keep that […]
Some parents live vicariously through their children. They are enlivened by their accomplishments. They are invigorated by their potential. With some families, the children are encouraged to carry on the familial occupation passed down one generation to the next. Doctor. Lawyer. Teacher, perhaps. Police officer. Nurse. That’s what Annie’s mother was. A nurse. Annie […]
The butchery began out of the blue and, fittingly, in a freezing rain storm called a Blue Norther, that swept across the Texas hill country on New Years Eve, 1884. That evening an African American laborer by the name of Walter Spencer staggered across the yard from his servant’s shack and pounded on the door […]
In Greek mythology Cerberus is a three-headed monster hound that guards the gates of hell, hence the phrase “hounds of hell”. In director Ben Young’s horror film Hounds of Love three characters are grafted together for the sake of–I hesitate to even go there–love. The film opens in a mundane, slightly gritty neighborhood. The camera swoops down […]
God forbid that it ever happens to one of us: a loved one leaves, never to return. There is no dreaded call from the hospital or the police. There is nothing. He just doesn’t come home for dinner. She never shows up for work. They seemingly vanish; into thin air as it were. How could […]
All Things Thriller 