Drama

I love when a filmmaker takes a calm, everyday setting—maybe even one that evokes a feeling of serenity and beauty--and suddenly reverses it and turns that calm into a stunning trap from which there is seemingly no escape. That’s exactly the hook of the 1997 movie Breakdown, a terrific Hitchcock-like mystery that turns a road trip full of promise into a nerve-wracking ordeal filled with desperation and terror. Unlike other movies that often use the “road trip to hell” scenari

The story goes that before Steven Spielberg directs a new film, he recharges his inspiration by always rewatching the same four movies—four movies that, for him, are the greatest ever made. They are: Lawrence of Arabia, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Searchers, and Seven Samurai. Made in 1954, and directed by Akira Kurosawa, Seven Samurai has been cited by director George Lucas as his all-time favorite movie, the one that most influenced him when first creating Star Wars. Set in

In actor Al Pacino’s autobiography Sonny Boy—a moving and worthwhile read, by the way—he tells the story of how he was in L.A. one day when he passed a movie theatre that was showing a classic gangster film. That film was Scarface. Made in 1932, it starred Paul Muni and was directed by Howard Hawks. It’s a violent tale about a gangster’s rise and downfall during prohibition. Pacino had never seen the movie before, but growing up his grandfather had raved about how much he lov

One of my favorite authors is Dashiell Hammett, a master of hardboiled suspense and detective fiction. The Maltese Falcon is his most famous creation. But his first novel Red Harvest is legendary in its own right. Hammett’s novel is about a nameless private detective whose job brings him to a small town that’s overrun by crime and corruption thanks to two rival gangs. As the detective begins to clean-up the town, in a clever twist he doesn’t do it on his own, but by manipulat

There’s an absolutely wonderful little suspense film just waiting to seduce you with its web of film noir charms. It’s called The Window. Clocking in at a mere 73-minutes, The Window was a surprise critical and box office hit for RKO Pictures when it was released in 1949. Based on a short story by the great American crime writer Cornell Woolrich—who also wrote the short story upon which Alfred Hitchcock based his classic film Rear Window—The Window has a nifty premise. Woolri

The Wild Bunch is one of my favorite movies. It’s in my top five, for sure. Made in 1969, it’s an epic western directed by Sam Peckinpah, with a cast of veteran Hollywood actors: William Holden, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson, Warren Oates and Edmund O’Brien. The Wild Bunch is a landmark work filled with artistic accomplishments in the way the film is edited and its revolutionary use of slow motion. Several great directors had already used these techniques for grea

“Hello In There” is one of my favorite songs written by John Prine. It’s a melancholy portrait of an older, long-married couple whose golden years are far from golden. Their lives have been tarnished by loss and by feeling alone and forgotten. In his haunting refrain, Prine sings that every day, old people just grow lonesome, waiting for someone to say to them, “Hello in there.” It is a compassionate reminder that we should all practice. Unable to pay his bills, Umberto teet

One of the greatest films ever made is Greed. Produced in 1924 by the brilliant director Erich von Stroheim, it concerns three people whose lives are destroyed when they become obsessed with the money that one of them wins in a lottery. The original version of the film ran over eight hours, but MGM brutally cut it down to two-and-a-half hours and the rest of von Stroheim’s masterpiece has been lost. The film gives Bogart one of his greatest roles as Fred C. Dobbs. Another gre

There have been many memorable films about country and western singers. Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges. Coal Miner’s Daughter with Sissy Spacek. The little-known Pay Day with Rip Torn. And this gem: 1983’s Tender Mercies, starring Robert Duvall. Duvall stars as Mac Sledge, an alcoholic, has-been country and western singer-songwriter who wakes up one morning on the floor of a ramshackle Texas motel, hung over after a whiskey-fueled fight. Broke, he convinces the motel’s owner R

Of all the actors I love in movies made in post-World War II America, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan and Burt Lancaster are three of my absolute favorites. Their on-screen charisma and intensity, their willingness to portray complex heroes as well as antagonists with frightening hearts of darkness, always draws me to them. No matter what the film or the genre, I find those three actors compelling. Burt Lancaster made many great movies that I could easily review here: The Sweet S

Of all the American writers who made a name for themselves writing hardboiled stories in the 1930s and 1940s, one of my favorites is Horace McCoy. His best-known novel is They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? It’s a Depression-era story about a dance marathon, which was a real-life popular fad at the time. McCoy—working as a reporter in California—was assigned to write a story about a marathon held in a ballroom out on the famed Santa Monica pier. He found what he saw there so fasci

When Adam Schlesinger—bass player of the band Fountains of Wayne—heard that songwriters around the country were invited to write and submit a song for a new movie being made about musicians in the early 1960s, he figured “Why not?” It would be fun to give it a try. He loved 1960s pop music. So, he wrote a catchy, British-invasion style song, with a dash of The Monkees thrown in, and submitted his tape. A few months passed, and then word came that his song had been picked out

“He took off a sweater that was hung over his shoulders and dove in.” With these words, the great American writer John Cheever plunges us deeper into the world of The Swimmer, his acclaimed 1964 short story about one man’s journey into his own heart of darkness. Four years later, the story was adapted into a film starring Burt Lancaster, and the result is stunning—a completely unique movie that is a worthy tribute to Cheever’s masterpiece. Set in a wealthy New England suburb,

Director William Friedkin passed away in 2023. Among the tributes that many of today’s younger filmmakers paid to him was to acknowledge the incredible feat of his career in the 1970s when he made two certifiable American classics back-to-back—1971’s The French Connection, followed two years later by The Exorcist. With those twin blockbusters to his credit, Friedkin had the creative and box office muscle to make anything he wanted for his next project. He chose to adapt a Fre

Actor Paul Giamatti won a Best Actor award at last month’s Golden Globes ceremony for his memorable performance in The Holdovers, one of the best movies of 2023. In his acceptance speech, Giamatti thanked his director Alexander Payne, whom he called Alexander the Great. And for good reason! Payne has directed a number of terrific films over the past 20 years—strong character-centered dramas often distinguished by dark, comedic touches that vividly bring the struggles of the c

Made in 1957, The Sweet Smell of Success is one of the greatest American films to ever come out of the Hollywood studio system. The story is set in the glamorous world of Manhattan in the 1950s when powerful gossip columnists, tabloid newspapers, and publicity-hungry press agents vied for attention and fame in such legendary midtown night clubs as “21.” Burt Lancaster plays J.J. Hunsecker, an arrogant, powerful New York columnist who controls and manipulates people to suit hi

And now for something completely different. Really different. With all the attention being paid to this year’s Barbie movie starring Margot Robbie, I must share a review of one of my favorite experimental, cult films. it’s Superstar – The Karen Carpenter Story, a 1987 movie about music star Karen Carpenter, with a cast of…well, Barbie and Den dolls. Yes, you heard that right. Directed by Todd Haynes when he was still in graduate school, and before he went on to a successful

I want to tell you about one of the greatest movies ever made. But first, a little background. As a film professor, I was always astounded that so many students had rarely seen more than a few movies produced before they were born. Think about that. If they were born, say, in 2000 or later, most of them had little if any awareness of movies made before that. They knew Pixar, Disney, Marvel and Harry Potter stories by heart, but they were largely blind to the flood of movies m

If there was a DNA test to identify the family tree of my lifelong love of movies, I have no doubt that my strongest and deepest tap root would be the western. I was born in 1953, and the myth of the American frontier has always been there for me—a parade of iconic images, both on tv and on the silver screen. I have been obsessed with the genre as long as I can remember. once I even attended a 48-hour film festival that showed westerns and only westerns, with no break between

Between 1962 and 1966, U.S. movie audiences were treated to three terrific movies that were super-charged with rage, tension, and dread—three elements that were also setting fire to our country’s cultural and political landscape—from the Cold War and the assassination of JFK to the Vietnam War and civil unrest. All three of these movies were directed by the acclaimed filmmaker John Frankenheimer and today are known as his “paranoia trilogy”. They are: The Manchurian Candidate