4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on February 4, 2021

“After you’re married… That’s a funny thing to hear your wife say!” – Joel McCrea as Tom Jeffers All the timeless Preston Sturges pictures have the pace of a freight train barreling down the tracks in loop de loops and figure eights. The Prologue of The Palm Beach Story sets...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on February 2, 2021

“If it wasn’t for graft, you’d get a very low type of people in politics!” – William Demarest The Great McGinty feels like a film of many notable firsts. The two most prominent ones being Preston Sturges’s first time in the director’s chair, famously agreei   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on January 29, 2021

Since I watched more contemporary films than I usually do for award season, I put together some capsule reviews. There’s not too much rhyme or reason to these, but I thought I would include them here. Let me know what you thought of these movies. Thank you! Palm Springs In...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on January 27, 2021

“You don’t have to die to keep the John Doe ideal alive. Someone already died for that once. The first John Doe. And he’s kept that ideal alive for nearly 2,000 years.” – Barbara Stanwyck as Ann Mitchell In their final collaboration, Capra and Riskin draw on the same c   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on January 25, 2021

The entire premise is set around National Bank in New York City during The Depression. If it’s not enough explanation already, at least we have some hint of where we might be headed. American Madness is an obvious relic of the saucier years of Capra and Riskin before the production...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on January 23, 2021

These are some of the films that I enjoyed from 2020. Because I watched more new releases than is typical in the last few years, I went ahead and wrote capsule length reviews to keep it more manageable. Enjoy! Minari  Minari plays as another perspective on the American Dream. It’s...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on January 21, 2021

I must admit to committing an unforgivable fallacy. Maybe I’m the only perpetrator, but there might be others too. In my own mental computations, I often attribute Jane Wyman as the first wife of Ronald Reagan more than I equate her with her acting career. And though Nancy Davis hardly...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on January 19, 2021

“When I was a child I spake like a child…” ~ 1 Corinthians 13 Like the previous year’s Valley of Decision, The Yearling opens with an establishing shot paired with Gregory Peck’s voice, this time in a folksier register. Aside from being unoriginal, one can hardly conde   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on January 16, 2021

Gregory Peck’s pleasantly resonant voice brings us into the moment. The scene is unimaginative yet unmistakable with its obviously scaled-down establishing shot. Pittsburgh. Smokestacks and steel. These are the days of Andrew Carnegie and the transcontinental railroad wrapping its way east to   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on January 14, 2021

Physics and Mathematics are the two primary focuses of Marie Curie’s life. In the early days, when she was one of the few solitary women in a Parisian sphere of academia, dominated by dismissive men, she still went by her maiden name and took on the rigors of study with...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on January 12, 2021

When you grow up with a sister, I imagine most people are aware of books like Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, Anne of Greene Gables, and Little House on The Prairie. However, especially when you’re young, you rarely appreciate them fully or comprehend how notable they are as cultural artif   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on January 10, 2021

If we had to provide a broad sense of Cheyenne Autumn, it would be all about the mass Exodus of the Cheyenne in 1878 as they journey from the arid land they’ve been subjugated to back to the land the white man had promised to return to them all along....   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on January 8, 2021

“It’s alright for Mr. Lincoln to say we’re free, but that ain’t so. Maybe someday, but not yet.” – Sergeant Rutledge Sergeant Rutledge rarely gets talked about with the greatest westerns or even the greatest westerns of John Ford. Without getting overly effusive   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on January 6, 2021

In my youth, Robert Preston always struck me as a Hollywood superstar because he so lithely and unequivocally commands the center of this grand production. There is no movie without him, and he pretty much captures the imagination of the audience. As I’ve grown older, logged more movies, it a   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on January 4, 2021

With such a robust body of work, it’s no surprise John Ford often gravitated toward certain images to represent the West and Two Rode Together it little different with the director returning to familiar iconography. This time it’s Jimmy Stewart, not Henry Fonda, propped up against a rai   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on January 2, 2021

“You not only put the fear of God into them, you scared the hell out of them.” – Arthur Kennedy as Jim Lefferts talking about Elmer Gantry. Elmer Gantry opens with a disclaimer, which no doubt plays as a defense tactic against the National Legion of Decency. However, taking a...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 30, 2020

Divorce American Style starts out as a symphony of marital nagging, and it looks to build off this cacophony to make some sense of the current state of affairs in 1960s America. While the title doesn’t capture the same milieu of its Italian counterpart, it fits for a plethora of...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 28, 2020

The Courtship of Eddie’s Father gives off all the signs of a light and frothy romantic comedy. You might envision it already: a widower-about-town with his son playing matchmaker as he tries to navigate the plethora of pretty girls who just happen to orbit around him. But we must make...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 26, 2020

If there’s any revelation from The Gazebo, it has to be the comic talents of Glenn Ford. Between his constant hypertension and exacerbated nerves, there’s a high-strung comic eccentricity present all but flying in the face of the persona Ford built his career on. The mind will quickly f   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 24, 2020

“Don’t look like you’re handling hot reindeer” – Bob Hope as The Lemon Drop Kid There blows the infamous Lemon Drop Kid a racetrack scrounger feeding the populous phony tips. In another context, he’d be one slimy stooge a la Richard Widmark, but played by Bob Hop   read more