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In honor of the inimitable Sidney Poitier, I spent some time revisiting a bevy of his finest films and also some underrated ones that were new to me. Because he was a prominent archetype for a black movie star, when he was often the only one, it’s fascinating to see the roles he chose at diffe read more

The Slender Thread feels a bit reminiscent of one of those self-contained film noir from a previous decade like 14 Hours or Dial 1119. It’s not a very ambitious scale, still, within its confines, it’s a rather enjoyable film. But, of course, the main attractions are Sidney Poitier and An read more

I can’t have made this up myself, but The Defiant Ones is a testament to the pithy axiom that proximity breeds empathy. Stanley Kramer has very clear intent when he builds the premise of his story out of a white and black prisoner, in the era of Jim Crow, who are chained together for the majo read more

In the 1950s Blackboard Jungle was one of the early pivotal roles for Sidney Poitier where he plays a disaffected youth who is ultimately mentored and encouraged by his teacher: Glenn Ford. Thus, it seems fitting, at the height of his own powers in 1967, Poitier left the student behind and graduate read more

The ample joys of Lilies of the Field come out of it being a kind of modern-day parable. It’s a modest and simple story, shot over 15 days by director Ralph Nelson, with a source novel gaining inspiration from the passage of the Christian scripture: “Consider the lilies of the field, ho read more

It’s a private fascination of mine to consider the sanctity and sheer awesomeness of human life in a very particular context. How parents pass on their genes — a package of habits and physical phenotypes to their kids — that we can then witness before our very eyes. And this is ev read more

The Lost Patrol comes out of the colonialist traditions of the era with the white soldiers in Mesopotamia doing battle with an Arab enemy who strike like ghosts. They are phantoms and rarely seen in the flesh. It’s an unwitting bit of commentary but it also simultaneously becomes one of the s read more

Although this is still a very early talkie, you can already see Howard Hawks developing a more intricate sense of dialogue which he would be known for in his pictures — most notably His Girl Friday. In the opening scene at the police station, we have dialogue piled on top of each other betwee read more

Undine Christian Petzold is the master of methodical cinema and with the conceit for Undine, he proves he’s more than up for imprinting his style onto a modern-day mythical fairy tale. He reunites again with Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski from Transit. Once more it’s a world from a distant past some read more

The Last Flight could conceivably be tacked onto the end of The Dawn Patrol. Although there is only one full scene of aerial combat, it informs everything that’s to follow because this shared experience colors the lives of the men who pushed through it. Some of them have been pushed through i read more

  Taken in the context of his entire career, Dawn Patrol becomes a prototype for a plethora of later Howard Hawks pictures involving aviation and male bonding, including the likes of Ceiling Zero, Test Pilot, and certainly, Only Angels Have Wings. As a WWI pilot, Hawks has more than a passing read more

This has felt like a strange year in movies, and I’m not even trying to make reference to the pandemic. 2020 had a bounty of great movies, and 2021 did as well, but it somehow felt different. Still, here are a handful of films that I enjoyed for different reasons. I want to go ahead and highli read more

We’re always told that teen culture was an invention of the 1950s and the post-war boon. To a certain extent this is true and yet watching something like Wild Boys is eye-opening. We open at the Sophomore Frolic. It suggests there were elements of this lifestyle generations before. Dances, gi read more

Pre-earthquake San Francisco was ripe for the Hollywood treatment, and there were a number of films to tackle this era including San Francisco or Barbary Coast. Frisco Jenny is more than at home in the same company. In the opening moments, the camera follows a constable into the local watering hole read more

“Have a little faith will yuh? There’s a great big plan that we don’t get. But the fella that’s made the plan knows what it’s all about.” Safe in Hell leans into its title as fire literally crackles behind the opening credits.  The story’s origins begin on read more

There’s an underlying sense that The Other Men’s Women was a primitive picture and yet it has a plucky energy as if it doesn’t know any better. Warner Bros. was at the cutting edge of talking pictures and Vitaphone wasn’t exactly old hat. The medium was still in its relative read more

One immediate takeaway from Luchino Visconti’s Italian epic Rocco and His Brothers is its gorgeous, swoon-worthy black & white that’s absolutely magnificent. It shares hallowed ground with films such as The Grapes of Wrath or The Godfather where the palette does yeoman’s work read more

It’s a slippery slope when you begin to consider the attractiveness of women in films because the conversation can get needlessly superficial. All I will say about Claudia Cardinale is that God was very good to her. But beyond her immaculate beauty, the joyous discovery of Girl with a Suitcas read more

If you need only one scene to be indicative of everything Big Deal on Madonna Street exemplifies as a caper comedy, the opening scene puts it out on a platter, ready for consumption. A shrimpy man with a mustache waits on the street corner as a lookout while another named Cosimo (Memmo Carotenuto) read more

The Shop Around The Corner samples a Hollywood-style Hungary that nevertheless establishes it as a much humbler, quieter picture than seasoned Lubitsch aficionados might be accustomed to. It’s subsequently one of his best efforts for this very reason. There’s an intimacy to it, recallin read more