The Best B-Movies of the 21st Century
The constant big-budget movie releases with their A-list stars, state of the art technology, and expensive advertising campaigns can make it easy to forget that most of the movie industry just doesn’t have that kind of money. Most filmmakers are working with limited resources, yet producing films that are in many cases better than those big money movies. Other filmmakers work with even less, produ...[Read More]
From Vampires to Cave Girls: The History of Hammer Films
That a little studio located in the English countryside consistently put out high quality films on a very limited budget is one of the great stories in filmmaking history. Hammer Films was the most successful independent film company ever, producing comedy, drama, mysteries, and war movies before finding their niche in horror. Hammer became a name synonymous with horror, a name that still means so...[Read More]
Space Travel, Alien Invasions, and Atomic Monsters: The Best 1950s Science Fiction Films
There are no movies more fun to watch than 1950s science fiction. The first of these films went from the sublime to the ridiculous, from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) to Cat Women of the Moon (1953). But they all had something for fans who couldn’t get enough of the exciting and popular new genre. The results were mixed but when they were good, they were very good. [pullquote_right]S...[Read More]
Pre-Code Hollywood 2: Music, Comedy, Action and Adventure
Pre-Code Hollywood studios spent millions transitioning their medium to sound and other new technologies that brought about major advances in photography, lighting, and set design. But there were still five million unemployed people in the United States and many more just getting by. The studios were losing money, many of them going bankrupt. By 1930 the breadlines were longer than the ticket line...[Read More]
Pre-Code Hollywood: Gangsters, Monsters, and Dames
I must have been about 12 years old when I first saw Tarzan and His Mate. I loved the Tarzan movies. Tarzan was the undisputed King of the Jungle and was the greatest, Cheetah was man’s best friend, Boy was annoying, and Jane was the Queen of the Jungle and a young male’s introduction to the allure of the female. The uncensored version, with a naked Jane silhouetted while changing clothes in a bac...[Read More]
The Muse in Film
[pullquote_left]“The history of cinema is boys photographing girls.” – Jean-Luc Godard[/pullquote_left] Since D.W. Griffith discovered stage actress Lillian Gish and immortalized her in dozens of silent movies, film directors, like other artists before them, have looked for inspiration in the muse. There is no more magical relationship in the world of art than that of the muse and the artist and t...[Read More]
Once is Enough: Ten Movies I Do Not Need to See Again
At a gathering of friends a few years ago, our host was proudly showing off his new big screen TV with surround sound. Nobody was paying much attention during the Road Runner cartoons and even less during the Charlie Chaplain movie. At the end of the night when just the inner circle remained, gathered in front of the TV, our host decided to put on a movie for us to watch: Saving Private Ryan, a pe...[Read More]
Ten Alternative Christmas Movies
If you’re getting your holiday movie lineup together you’re probably selecting from the canon of mandatory yuletide films. Sure they’re good, but when Die Hard is America’s number one Christmas movie, well, we have clearly crossed a line in our definition of “Christmas” movie. It now includes movies that aren’t about Christmas but merely have Christmas in them – songs, snow, deco...[Read More]
The 15 Best Neo-Noir Films
Since its beginning with The Maltese Falcon in 1941, the genre of film noir has been the quintessential American film style. It is recognizable around the world and features actors that went on to be stars and a wave of directors that became the best of their time. It has retained its popularity and relevance and with just a few films made over a 17-year-period, film noir still inspires cinema tod...[Read More]
Cinema Revisited: The Brave New World of Gattaca
We have always been stargazers. We look into the night sky and wonder what is out there and if future generations will travel to far away worlds. And we wonder what kind of world we will see in our lifetime and what kind of world our children and their children will inhabit. We have romanticized about and expressed our hopes for the future in literature, art, and film. From Fritz Lang’s Metropolis...[Read More]
Fearing the Dark: The Horror Films of Val Lewton
In 2005 Turner Home Entertainment released a box set of nine films from producer Val Lewton. Producers don’t usually get singled out for their influence on films and no other producer has had his work packaged in a box set. That all the films in this collection were made as “B” horror pictures is a remarkable testament to what can be done when the right person has a vision that can be put onto fil...[Read More]
Poetry Becomes Surrealism: The Cinema of Jean Rollin
The citizens of Paris were in a bad mood in May of 1968. Student protests lead to a general strike that almost caused the collapse of the government. The City of Light was paralyzed by the most violent protest seen in Europe in over 100 years. It was in this atmosphere that Jean Rollin’s first film opened in Paris. It was only one of two new films to open that week and audiences flocked to the cin...[Read More]
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