Blog

An English family, two brothers and their respective wives, converse with the priest, who tells them NOT to go to Carlsbad on any account. And if they do go, stay away from the castle. What castle? There’s no castle on the map!

One of the gifts of film director Jacques Tourneur was how he was able to take something that would seem minor and turn it into something profound. In his Val Lewton-produced horror films such as The Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, and The Leopard Man he takes what might be laughable premises, but creates haunting and psychological films through mood and atmosphere. Then he would make one of the greatest film noirs ever with Out of the Past. What would be conceived by some at first as a cheap crime quickie, he creates great emotion, and again uses mood and atmosphere.

Last year I decided to do a theme month for October, and watched every Halloween movie, all twelve of them. Some of them were a treat, some a trick (see what I did there?), but I soldiered on and got through them, living to tell the tale at sunrise on November 1st. I said to Craig, “What am I going to do next October? The Friday the 13th movies?“ He visibly shuddered and said, “God no! Why not do Hammer films?“ which was an excellent idea!

Legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa once remarked “In a mad world, only the mad are sane.” While this may be true for many of the characters throughout his body of work, the one that it calls to mind most is Kanji Watanabe, the central character of his 1952 drama Ikiru, which turns 70 this month.

Some months ago, the trailer for Don’t Worry Darling played before a movie I was seeing, and I leaned over to Blake and whispered, “This is the trailer where Olivia Wilde was served papers from Jason Sudeikis before it showed at a festival!“ So basically, things having nothing to do with the movie have been overshadowing this movie since the very moment it became public.

I’ve often noticed when people discuss Jean-Luc Godard, the one film they bring up is his 1960 film Breathless. While that film might have been the breakout – for its use of handheld, jump cuts, and pop culture references – he has other films that are even more inventive.

Do you like Agatha Christie? Do you like post-war British comedies? Do you like movies about theatre? Then do I have a movie for you!

Last Tuesday I was disheartened, as many were, to hear of the passing of Jean-Luc Godard. He was a name in the world of film that was as influential as D.W. Griffith or Orson Welles, in that he destroyed the typical convention of storytelling and craftsmanship. He was not only the last of the French New Wave, but he was the last of a group of world filmmakers from the mid-twentieth century, at a time when art house could be a part of the zeitgeist. These other names consisted of Fellini, Bergman, Kurosawa, Antonioni, and Godard’s own former friend and colleague Truffaut, where each new film of their’s would open, people would rush to see them and discuss the meanings of them. this been shown on screen more effectively than in Roberto Rossellini’s 1952 film ‘Europa 51, where the love isn’t the sentimentalized love between a man and a woman, but one woman’s unconditional love for humanity.