4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on September 16, 2019

Boxing movies and biopics are a mainstay of Hollywood. It’s an established fact so naming names is all but unnecessary. The affable brilliance of Gentleman Jim is its agile footwork allowing it to sidestep a myriad of tropes attached to biopics and the schmaltz that Old Hollywood was always ca   read more

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

Anyone who knows even a smidgeon about historical dates knows what the big to-do with 1588 is. If anything, 1588 automatically means the sinking of the Spanish Armada by Queen Elizabeth’s forces. So when a film opens in Spain in 1585 we already have a good idea of where we...   read more

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

The year is 1866. The Civil War is over and anyone with vision is moving west. One such outpost is Kansas where the railway is replacing the stagecoach. It’s a world of iron men and iron horses. Because a place like the notorious Dodge City is a “town that knew...   read more

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

To a certain stratum of society — namely classic movie fans — it’s nearly impossible to imagine Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland not being paired together or not being box office draws, for that matter. However, on both accounts in 1935, the studio was taking quite the risk, st   read more

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

The western is founded on certain unifying archetypes, from drifters to revenge stories, showdowns and the westward progress of civilization butting up against the lawless wilderness. It always proved a fitting genre for morality plays and deeply thematic ideas. The tradition of the bank robbery goe   read more

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

As the credits roll, the camera zooms its way down a residential street but doesn’t feel natural. It’s like a peering gaze casing the scene as music hammers away in the background. What makes the imagery more disconcerting is that this tranquil picture-perfect suburbia could be plucked   read more

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

The legend goes that the ever-meddling megalomaniac of RKO Pictures, Howard Hughes, insisted the film’s title be changed to Rancho Notorious because European audiences wouldn’t know what a “Chug-a-Lug” was. Director Fritz Lang, who was himself a European emigre, snidely repli   read more

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

Upon being immersed in City for Conquest, it feels like a cast of millions because so many familiar faces make an appearance for any given amount of time. Surely, the most important coupling is James Cagney and Ann Sheridan who are paired much in the same way as Angel With...   read more

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

It’s almost instantly reasonable to clump this cinematic adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights with other contemporary pictures swirling with gothic menace like Rebecca, Suspicion, and Jane Eyre. The latter film, of course, is based off the novel of another of the Bronte Sisters   read more

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

This is my entry in The Vive la France Blogathon. Thanks to Lady Eve and Silver Screen Modes for having me! I recently read some excerpts out of Soren Kierkegaard’s “Attack on Christendom” and the Danish philosopher makes the case “Even when you don’t live by a Christi   read more

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

The oldest movie theater near where I grew up was built in 1938 and by some peculiar coincidence, Bette Davis is said to have driven by the establishment time and time again. Being the iron-willed personality that she was, the rising star demanded they open with her latest movie. (I assume very few   read more

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

Sinclair Lewis is one of those literary names I thoroughly recognize and assume must have been a culture-shaper in his day. Yet I can say nothing intelligible about him. In fact, this guttural reaction has more to do with my own ignorance with prose then it does with his fading into...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on August 18, 2019

Though not what I might consider purebred screwball comedy, The Good Fairy nevertheless shares some of the essence of the genre, based around class divides and fanciful plotting. The roots in fairy stories even precede two of Billy Wilder’s finest early scripts Midnight (1939) and Ball of Fir   read more

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

Before I knew the word “auteur” I think subconsciously I began to realize Orson Welles was gifted with this kind of innate artistic force that cemented all his pictures together. It’s part of what made him such a terror to work with and simultaneously a genius of such mammoth acco   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on August 13, 2019

In the thick of the war years, Cover Girl stands as a beacon of unadulterated Technicolor lavishness permeating the screen. It proved a fine diversion from the day-to-day, which was wildly popular in its time as a vehicle for beloved screen star and Pin-Up, Rita Hayworth. Watching Cover Girl now, i   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on August 11, 2019

Buenos Aires conjures up a very specific Rita Hayworth film — the one that remains emblematic of her career and also typecasted her — you probably know it too, Gilda (1946). Thus, when You Were Never Lovelier opens in the same city, there’s this instant evocation in the parallel w   read more

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

Man’s Favorite Sport was meant to be a Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn reunion that never materialized. Because, of course, put together with Howard Hawks that only means one film — the most outrageous, cockamamie, frenzied escapade ever captured on celluloid — Bringing up Baby (1   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on August 6, 2019

Howard Hawks always had a knack for creating worlds and subsequently building camaraderie between his characters simply by stringing scenes together one after the other. Only Angels Have Wings sets up a premise — revolving around a South American outpost — then settles in on two flyers.   read more

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

Author Edna Ferber in both her plays and novels had a penchant for sprawling familial tales of Americana which were indubitably fortified by social issues. Come and Get It gives the initial impression of another Howard Hawks movie released the same year, Barbary Coast (1936). In fact, that’s   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on August 2, 2019

The Pre-Code era of Hollywood is a legitimate marvel because in a span of only a few solitary years was a period of filmmaking bursting at the seams with vice, corruption, and licentiousness that we would never see again until the late 1960s. One could say that each of these...   read more