4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 20, 2019

I do appreciate older films running their credits at the beginning, and I make a habit of perusing them for familiar names. More often than not, I’m rewarded in some small regard. However, The Westerner features a rather unusual notice:  “This story is legend founded on fact and, with t   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 19, 2019

“The love of a man for a woman waxes and wanes like the moon…but the love of brother for brother is steadfast as the stars, and endures like the word of the prophet.” ~ Arabian Proverb No matter what Joseph Von Sternberg thought of such a proclamation, we can concede...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 17, 2019

In the imperialist traditions of the likes of Tarzan The Ape Man (1932), Gunga Din (1939) and even Lawrence of Arabia (1962) comes The Lives of Bengal Lancers. We cannot take the era or the colonial sentiments for granted like the contemporary viewer did since we must reconcile with the complicated   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 15, 2019

“Immorality may be fun but it’s not fun enough to take the place of virtue and three square meals a day.”  All director Ernst Lubitsch has at his disposal is a train compartment and three actors. Yet the opening scene of Design for Living positions itself as one of the most deligh   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 14, 2019

I’ve been trying to help people out who might just be getting started with classic movies. It can be admittedly overwhelming to know what to watch so here are 4 films to aid you in your quest. The man of the hour is none other than Jimmy Stewart. First things...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 12, 2019

Party Girl is yet another sumptuous Metrocolor feast from Nicholas Ray though the circumstances were admittedly less conducive for another masterpiece. In need of money, Ray took the job but instead getting his accustomed input on the script, he found himself being partnered with a producer he had   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 10, 2019

James Mason gleaned the idea for Bigger Than Life from a contemporary article featured in The New Yorker by a medical writer named Berton Roueché. He detailed the side effects of the drug cortisone featured in real-life horror stories. The title is certainly far from a misnomer and James Mason give   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 8, 2019

The connotation of the film’s lurid title feels slightly deceptive. Because The Lusty Men might have basic elements of men who desire after women but it’s fairly restrained in this regard. At least more than I initially conceived. However, it is a film characterized by a zeal or a lust...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 7, 2019

I’m back at it again with a new Beginner’s Guide where we take a famous person and make their lengthy career manageable by picking 4 films to watch in order to get your feet wet. Here’s a jumping-off point for Katharine Hepburn. I make a point of not quantifying actors by...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 5, 2019

Run Silent, Run Deep features what amounts to a cold open, set in the Bungo Straits, near the coast of Japan in 1942. The foreboding sonar-infused score by Franz Waxman suggests this will be a no-nonsense war drama and sure enough, within the first 5 minutes, a submarine commanded by...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 4, 2019

As of late, it feels like the world has entered a bit of a Mr. Roger’s Reinnaissance. He’s been gone since 2003 and yet last year we had Morgan Neville’s edifying documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? There are podcasts galore including Finding Fred and then Mr. Rogers’   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 3, 2019

I Want to Live! calls upon the words of two men of repute to make an ethos appeal to the audience. The first quotation is plucked from Albert Camus. I’m not sure what the context actually was but the excerpt reads, “What good are films if they do not make us...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on December 1, 2019

Here is the first of two purported instances where Paul Newman wound up taking on roles earmarked for the recently deceased James Dean. Dean even had a fairly visible relationship with Pier Angeli who would have been his co-star. At one point, there was even talk of marriage swirling around though   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on November 30, 2019

Barry Sullivan has an absolute field day as a homicide cop, Lt. Collier Bonnabel, with very calculated methods of getting to the root of every crime. Whether it comes by pushing, cajoling, romancing, tricking, flattering — he’ll do whatever is necessary. What matters to him is to keep st   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on November 29, 2019

The scene is set. It’s a week before Christmas. We find ourselves in the charming community called Balboa, 50 miles from Los Angeles, and Joan Bennett drives off into the city for very urgent business. She meets an undesirable in a bar, but this is by no means a tryst. She...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on November 27, 2019

The ever effervescent Deanna Durbin is sprawled out on the seat of a train car feverishly reading the pages of her thrilling mystery novel aloud. She happens to glance out the window only to stop and see a man bludgeoned to death with a crowbar! It was through the window shade,...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on November 25, 2019

Christmas Holiday begins as a movie we’ve probably seen before countless times. A returning G.I. (Dean Harens) is getting ready for some Christmas leave except our star is as stiff as cardboard and that comes before he gets the sobering news. The girl he was intent on marrying has duped him...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on November 24, 2019

We must acknowledge the elephant or rather, the rabbit in the room. Grappling with the intersection of Nazis and humor has always been a loaded and controversial topic. But usually, it fosters conversation nonetheless so here’s an attempt to provide some meager context. The Great Dictator (194   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on November 23, 2019

The Naked City begins inauspiciously enough with a flyover of New York and an introduction by producer Mark Hellinger. It seems like we’ve seen this countless times before. It’s almost like a stock image. And yet in the case of this picture, it was really one of the forerunners of...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on November 22, 2019

We follow up last week’s guide to classic film noir of the 1940s by continuing into the 1950s with 4 more entries. With the new decade came new progressions in realism, location shooting, and heightened character psychology. As Paul Schrader wrote, the noir hero started to “go bananas.&#   read more