Sullivan’s Travels by Preston Sturges
A message movie disguised as a frothy comedy when it isn’t a frothy comedy disguised as a message movie, Sullivan’s Travels (1941) is an inside-baseball satire on Hollywood’s self-importance and […]
Tag Archives: Hollywood
Dawn by Electrician: The Constructed World of Guys and Dolls
In times like these, it may sound redundant — to say nothing of that old bugbear, “escapist” — to retreat to the heightened artifice of the studio-bound Hollywood musical. Globetrotting […]
My Most Anticipated 2019 Movies
As it turns out, two things can be true at once. First, with the aid of a couple different subscription services, I’ve been able to see more movies from the […]
Double Feature: With Barton Fink In a Lonely Place
Welcome to Hollywood: where art goes to die, or so the story goes. Of all cinematic craftspeople, the writer is typically the most prone to cynicism, because the average screenwriter […]
Double Feature: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and La La Land
Among the current decade’s crop of movie neo-musicals, Damien Chazelle’s La La Land stands apart for tapping into traditions uniquely native to film. That is to say, it’s a song-and-dance extravaganza […]
“Every Soda Jerk in This Country’s Got an Idea He’s Somebody” — Class in The Best Years of Our Lives
William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives is fondly remembered as an honest and heartfelt look at the struggles of returning veterans. More than seventy years later, not only have […]
“I just made the name up to give him some personality” — L.A. Confidential
I always loved their names. To me, they matched each character and the actor playing him to perfection — maybe too well. This may have been a case in which the […]
Both Versions: Goodbye to Language
For the final entry in my “Both Versions” blog series, I’ll be breaking one of my major rules. For every preceding film, the competing versions were each released theatrically at […]
“All He’s Got and All He’s Ever Gonna Have” — Unforgiven
For feeling sad, Unforgiven is without question one of the most effective of movies. So many of life’s miseries are cataloged here, from loss of life and broken relationships to the […]
Returning to Bill Murray’s Ghostbusters
Attaching a possessive to a movie title is almost always questionable, as there tend to be a great number of creative forces behind the finished work. Even auteurists acknowledge that […]
Geppetto's Clocks 