The Class of 2021: My Favorite Movies
A short story about breath: Having become fully vaccinated against COVID-19 a month ago, I’ve begun taking regular trips to the movie theater again. Few topics are as perennially popular […]
Tag Archives: film noir
Double Feature: Memento and Irreversible
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”–Kierkegaard “He destroyed my ability to live.”–Leonard Shelby, Memento “Paranoiacs need everything explained. Some things can’t be explained.”–Alex, Irreversible […]
“He Doesn’t Need You; He’s Got His Memories” — Selznick’s and Hitchcock’s Rebecca
David O. Selznick brought Alfred Hitchcock to Hollywood in 1939 and promptly got the British master his first and only Best Picture win at the Academy Awards. That film, Rebecca (1940) […]
Double Feature: The Big Lebowski and The Beach Bum
“Sometimes there’s a man — well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.” Thus the voiceover narration in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski […]
Announcing My 2020 Movie Retrospective: Hamlet on Film
Shakespearean cinema, like many of the other subjects I’ve approached in my annual film retrospectives, is something in which I’ve long wanted to become more fluent. There are boundless avenues […]
Wanting to Believe in Escape from Alcatraz
When there’s no definitive evidence either way, the romance of the situation is free to blossom. So often viewed with either fear or contempt, criminals gain a very different reputation […]
Double Feature: With Barton Fink In a Lonely Place
Welcome to Hollywood: where art goes to die, or so the story goes. Of all cinematic craftspeople, the writer is typically the most prone to cynicism, because the average screenwriter […]
Double Feature: Pickpockets in Love
From what I’ve been able to determine, the idea that Robert Bresson may have taken inspiration from Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street (1953) when he made Pickpocket (1959) is tenuous at […]
“Sounds Like a Soul in Hell” — The Asphalt Jungle
The thrill of the caper itself in John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle is more exciting for its participants than whether or not they get away with it. Such is the fatalistic […]
Claustrophobia in Winchester ’73
In 1950, the Academy ratio (1.37:1) was still the norm in Hollywood cinema, although wider image formats were just around the corner. Filmmakers could use the traditional film frame in […]
