You hardly notice the knot growing in your stomach. The glamorous movie stars on the screen are doing little more than talking as they try to work out whether or not there has been a murder. Slowly you begin to realize, long before they do, that they're putting themselves in danger. Your hand starts squeezing … Continue reading Marriage, alienation, and Alfred Hitchcock: Why Rear Window belongs on my A+ list
Category: A+ List
A+ List: The Lady Eve
The art of screwball comedy is pretty much lost today, and has been for at least 60 years. Sure, we still have romantic comedies, and some of them are even pretty good. But the screwball was different. The romantic leads were not only attractive and sexy; they were glamorous--dressed, made up and photographed to look … Continue reading A+ List: The Lady Eve
A+ List: The Kid Brother
When people talk about the masterpieces of silent comedy, they usually name The Gold Rush, The General, and City Lights. If they bring up Harold Lloyd at all, they'll praise Safety Last or The Freshman. To my mind, Lloyd's The Kid Brother belongs with the best. It earns that right by its irresistible story, its beautiful … Continue reading A+ List: The Kid Brother
The A+ List Table of Contents
I've moved this list elsewhere.
A+ List: It’s a Wonderful Life
A lot of people hate Frank Capra's most famous film, It's a Wonderful Life. They find it cloying, manipulative, and unbearably sentimental. After all, it finishes with what's probably the happiest happy ending in the history of Hollywood happy endings. But I disagree. Yes, that ending lays on the Christmas cheer and milk of human … Continue reading A+ List: It’s a Wonderful Life
A+ List: Ikiru; also a Blu-ray review
A bureaucrat, emotionally dead and cut-off from both his job and his family, discovers that he has only months to live. He has scarce time to make his empty life meaningful. He will find that meaning in Akira Kurosawa's 1952 masterpiece, Ikiru. The name translates into English as To Live. Note: I re-edited this article on … Continue reading A+ List: Ikiru; also a Blu-ray review
A+ List: The Grapes of Wrath
By all logic, the film version of The Grapes of Wrath shouldn't have been made--let alone become a masterpiece. It's a great film based on a great novel--how often does that happen? It was directed by the revered auteurist director John Ford, but it's not really an auteurist film. It's a Hollywood movie from the … Continue reading A+ List: The Grapes of Wrath
A+ List: Grand Illusion
Most movies are forgotten five years after their release. The masterpieces last decades. And so I continue with my survey of my all-time favorite films--my A+ list. Early in Jean Renoir's 1937 POW tale, a German officer announces that he just shot down a plane. He orders an underling to find and a capture the … Continue reading A+ List: Grand Illusion
A+ List: Goodfellas
Looking at my A+ list alphabetically, we go from The Godfather to The Godfather Part II--epic stories of American organized crime. Next alphabetically: Goodfellas--another epic story of American organized crime. And with Goodfellas, we really get down to the nitty gritty. And believe me, it's gritty. The Godfather was based on a novel; Goodfellas on a … Continue reading A+ List: Goodfellas
A+ List: The Godfather Part II
Both Roger Ebert and David Thomson argued that the Godfather films work because we never see the inevitable innocent victims of the Corleones' violence. The only people they kill onscreen are other criminals--usually those bent on killing them. But that argument only works if you assume that young, female sex workers don't count as innocent … Continue reading A+ List: The Godfather Part II
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