4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on November 6, 2018

A real disaster. That’s what His Kind of Woman could have easily been because with Howard Hughes meddling in any production it was very likely that something would get dragged out, lopped off, or in some way switched around. In this case, the whole film was shot by John Farrow only...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on November 5, 2018

A film like the Searchers (1956) or even The Bravados (1958) frames the western as a tale of vengeance where a vendetta is carried out from start to finish only to get twisted up along the way across moral lines. Pursued is a psychological western that takes up the story from the opposite...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on November 4, 2018

Like any self-respecting film noir, it opens with men whaling on each other amid stylized darkness. Edward Dmytryk’s Crossfire is an issue-driven picture and it’s an important one given the cultural moment in which it came into being. There’s no doubting that. But though the image   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on November 3, 2018

“Who are you, God? Didn’t you ever make a mistake?” – Cathy O’Donnell as Susan Carmichael Counselor at Law (1933) was an early William Wyler film from the 1930s that shares some cursory similarities with this feature. Along those lines, Detective Story proves to be an   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on November 2, 2018

Not that this should deter you completely but The Enforcer isn’t a particularly unique crime film by any stretch of the imagination. Still, we have Humphrey Bogart headlining the police procedural not unlike a Call Northside 777 (1948), The Naked City (1948), or Panic in the Streets (1950). He   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on November 1, 2018

Director Nicholas Ray customarily takes his material and subverts our expectations or better yet deconstructs the conventions that we often take for granted. But that is also matched with his penchant for showing a very raw and honest percolation of emotion. It causes every one of his movies to lea   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on October 31, 2018

The finest compliment I can extend to House on Haunted Hill is how it manages to exemplify many of the tropes we have come to imagine in old horror movies of yore even without having seen one. Because the hallmarks of the genre, by some curious form of cultural osmosis, have been passed down...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on October 31, 2018

The finest compliment I can extend to House on Haunted Hill is how it manages to exemplify many of the tropes we have come to imagine in old horror movies of yore even without having seen one. Because the hallmarks of the genre, by some curious form of cultural osmosis, have been passed down...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on October 30, 2018

Love Crazy puts William Powell and Myrna Loy in their wheelhouse as the lithe and sprightly romantic partners placed at the center of this screwball comedy.  Steve Ireland (Powell) is in a terribly good mood getting home in his taxi singing ditties as he makes his way up to surprise his wife Susan    read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on October 29, 2018

The film’s plotline can be summed up by amnesia. A no-fun businessman named Larry Wilson who drinks nothing harder than grape juice is conked on the head while saving a drunk who went overboard. Poof! Just like that Larry is no longer and he becomes his presumed former self —...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on October 28, 2018

Clark Gable was anxious to do a movie about oil — wildcatters as they call ’em — because his father had been an oil man. Of course, MGM was looking to put him in such a picture too and when a certain story was published in Cosmopolitan it would prove...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on October 27, 2018

Test Pilot is a fine piece of time capsule filmmaking and there’s little doubt that the film showcases a dizzying array of airplanes that we very rarely see today. In that sense, it’s an aerial picture with some truly dazzling footage. By 1930s standards, this is also an action picture,   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on October 26, 2018

There was a time when San Francisco was synonymous with the earthquake. Before Rice-A-Roni, The Golden Gate, Bullitt, or heaven forbid, The Giants. For me, it’s hardly a major spoiler to say this film revolves around this tragic date back in 1906 (a strikingly recent 30 years before the film   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on October 25, 2018

The stars are out for Manhattan Melodrama, at least three of the biggest from the 1930s, in Clark Gable, William Powell, and Myrna Loy. Except the latter two had yet to start their star-making run with director W.S. Van Dyke in The Thin Man until later in the year. This...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on October 23, 2018

My earliest recollection of knowing anything about Red Dust comes from the novel A Confederacy of Dunces where it’s recounted how the feckless oaf of a main character was born soon after his parents saw the picture being so caught up in the throes of Gable and Harlow’s cinematic passion   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on October 22, 2018

Ironically Harlow as a Red-Head feels more representative of her projected image than Harlow as a Platinum Blonde (1931). Lil is a malevolent seductress. A homewrecker. The queen of meretricious relations. Simultaneously frisky and fun. But she’s got one specific man (Chester Morris) on her r   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on October 21, 2018

“It’s like a giraffe marrying a monkey!” ~ Conroy The nucleus of Capra regulars are all present and accounted for including a script adaptation by Jo Swerling and dialogue by Robert Riskin. The cast, on the other hand, is an interesting array of talents that simultaneously proves   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on October 20, 2018

Up until this point in time, The Marx Brother’s all-out assault on humanity had still mostly been geared at the likes of stuffy socialites, gangsters, college campuses, authority figures, etc. Albeit entertaining but fairly straightforward worlds where there was not that much to be navigated   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on October 19, 2018

At Paramount Pictures The Marx Brothers released a row of comedies with seemingly arbitrary names evoking fauna like Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and of course Duck Soup.  The phrase  “Horse Feathers” is essentially a variation on “Nonsense” though it so   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on October 18, 2018

Ernst Lubitsch made a name for himself and his “touch” in silents as well as leaving an indelible mark on the 1940s with the likes of Shop Around The Corner (1940), To Be or Not to Be (1942), Heaven Can Wait (1943), and Cluny Brown (1946). But for me, no...   read more