‘The 400 Blows’: the film that launched a cinematic revolution
It was an honor to be asked to host the first “Critic’s Choice” night at the beautiful Bijou Theatre in downtown Bridgeport tonight at 6:30. After looking through the new venue’s impressive catalog of...
View ArticleRent it now: ‘Pretty Poison’ starring the elusive Tuesday Weld
Hollywood got very nervous about movie violence in 1968 as a result of the terrible events of that year. In 1967, “Bonnie and Clyde” was condemned in some quarters for glamorizing violence, so when...
View Article‘The Wolf of Wall Street’: celebration or takedown?
For the umpteenth time, an engrossing and extremely well-made film about criminal behavior — “The Wolf of Wall Street” — is being accused of aiding and abetting what it shows us. A similar thing...
View Article‘The Apartment’ & the start of the 1960s in Hollywood
Decades can run together sometimes — fashions and art trends at the end of the 1980s weren’t that different from what happened four or five years later — but movie-wise, the 1960s started off...
View ArticleBad Movies We Love: ‘Palm Springs Weekend’
Released just a few weeks before JFK was killed in Dallas, the Warner Bros. release “Palm Springs Weekend” bears out many people’s belief that our pop culture idea of “the ’50s” lasted until November...
View ArticleThe Peter O’Toole movie that launched Woody Allen
When Peter O’Toole died last year, all of the obits of course referenced “Lawrence of Arabia,” the 1962 classic that introduced the Irish actor to movie audiences and made him an instant international...
View ArticleHere we go again: or, taking the Oscars seriously
I woke up to tremendous turbulence on Twitter today concerning the announcement of the award nominations by that West Coast movie trade organization. The internet is full of “snub” talk today. Outrage...
View ArticleNetflix mining: ‘No Way to Treat a Lady’
It was fun to see the largely forgotten 1968 black comedy “No Way to Treat a Lady” the other night, thanks to Netflix. The movie opened right after Rod Steiger won his Oscar for “In the Heat of the...
View Article‘Warner Bros.’: ‘Jazz Singer’ to James Dean
The brilliant movie critic and historian David Thomson has contributed a lean but insightful volume to the Yale University Press Jewish Lives series. “Warner Bros.” takes us through the history of...
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