Hollywood has no shortage of talented composers crafting mostly serviceable tunes for the next young adult literary adaptation or prestige awards tearjerker. But for every auteur like Hans Zimmer and John Williams, you have musical yes men pounding out ominous notes in anticipation of the next horror movie jump scare or making ratatat noise to …
Out of the Past Directed by Jacques Tourneur Written by Daniel Mainwaring Starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas USA, 97 min – 1947. “I never saw her in the daytime. We seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoked. I didn’t …
Arabian Nights Directed by John Rawlins Starring Jon Hall, Maria Montez, and Sabu USA, 86 min – 1942. Part of a series of exotic pictures released by Universal in the 1940s (the others of which include Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and White Savage), Arabian Nights places the Hollywood spin on the classic tale …
Forty 1940s Films: ‘Detour’ Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer Starring Tom Neal, Ann Savage, and Edmund MacDonald USA, 67 min – 1945. “Money. You know what that is. It’s the stuff, you never have enough of. Little green things with George Washington’s picture that men slave for, commit crimes for, die for. It’s the stuff …
On December 14, 2012, a young man named Adam Lanza broke into a primary school and fatally shot 26 people in the small village of Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Twenty of them were children, aged 6 or 7. On that day, no matter where I went or what I did, I couldn’t stop thinking about the …
Not every film can be Citizen Kane. Deemed by many as a perfect film (i.e. Rotten Tomatoes), Hollywood has tried to emulate its critical success for decades, but as an industry that strives on generic formulas, some have come close while other have missed the mark. Now, thanks to the trustworthy Tomatometer, we have a …
Headhunters Directed by Morten Tyldum Written by Lars Gudmestad, Jo Nesbø, and Ulf Ryberg Norway, 2011 While American politicians abjectly deride the Scandinavians for being ‘pinko commies’, Hollywood has been taking notice of their considerable cinematic talent, finding every opportunity to import some of their best films for American remakes. David Fincher’s The Girl with …
The title of Lee Server’s acclaimed 2002 biography, Robert Mitchum: Baby I Don’t Care (MacMillan), offers a perfect encapsulization of the eponymous actor: a hard-partying Hollywood Bad Boy who didn’t give a damn what moralizing finger-waggers thought of him, or what his peers in the movie business thought, or the press, or even the public. He …