My life at the movies.
Directed by Cheh Chang and Hsueh-Li Pao. Starring Kuan Tai Chen, Li Ching, David Chiang, and Mario Milano.
Chen Kuan-tai plays a young man who rises from penniless day-laborer to gangster boss in early twentieth century Shanghai. Continue reading...
Directed by Remi Weekes. Starring Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Malaika Wakoli-Abigaba, and Matt Smith.
A couple flee their native Sudan for England. They’re granted probationary asylum and housing. The filthy single family unit has peeling walls and faulty wiring, but it’s theirs alone. Forbidden to work or relocate lest they face deportation, they spend their days isolated in the house only to realize a malevolent force haunts its walls. Continue reading...
Directed by Jon Watts. Starring Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Jacob Batalon.
With his identity exposed and his friends and family suffering the consequences, Peter Parker seeks the aid of Doctor Strange, who casts a spell designed to make everyone forget Peter is Spider-Man. But things go awry and instead, the spell summons everyone who knows Peter is Spider-Man from across the multi-verse. Major spoilers follow. Continue reading...
Directed by Guy Hamilton. Starring Roger Moore, Yaphet Kotto, Jane Seymour, and Clifton James.
Roger Moore’s James Bond debut. He investigates a Caribbean dictator, Kananga, played by Yaphet Kotto, who has ties to a Harlem gangster named Mr. Big. Jane Seymour plays Solitaire, Kananga’s tarot card reading psychic. Continue reading...
Directed by John Ford. Starring Will Rogers, Marian Nixon, Vera Allen, and Howard Lally.
The first of three collaborations between star Will Rogers and director John Ford. Rogers plays a country doctor battling small-town prejudice while romancing a wealthy widow. Continue reading...
Directed by John Ford. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster, Barry Fitzgerald, and Denis O'Dea.
I thought Hitchcock’s adaptation of Seán O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock was bad, but it proves masterful compared to John Ford’s take on O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars. Continue reading...
Directed by John Ford. Starring Will Rogers, Anne Shirley, Irvin S. Cobb, and Eugene Pallette.
Will Rogers plays a medicine man turned steamboat operator racing to New Orleans to save his nephew from the gallows. Continue reading...
Directed by John Ford. Starring Henrietta Crosman, Heather Angel, Norman Foster, and Lucille La Verne.
Henrietta Crosman plays a rural woman who, rather than see her only son leave home and marry his local sweetheart, signs him up for World War I, where he perishes. After the war, she travels with a group of other mothers to visit her son’s grave. Continue reading...
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. Starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, Paul Meurisse, and Charles Vanel.
Simone Signoret plays Nicole, a boarding school teacher carrying on an affair with the abusive principal, Michel. After their latest fight leaves her with a black eye, Nicole recruits Michel’s long-suffering wife, Christina, in a plot to kill him. Major spoilers follow. Continue reading...
Directed by Alexander Mackendrick. Starring Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, and Martin Milner.
Tony Curtis plays Sidney Falco, a hungry Manhattan press agent desperate to curry favor with influential columnist J.J. Hunsecker, played by Burt Lancaster. Continue reading...
