I really love it when someone who has guest-posted at CE decides to come back with another article.  It shows that the experience was enjoyable and worth repeating.  LJ's own msstacy13 is such a person, and the author of our most recent post, Maria Evangelina Vázquez is another.  In this post, she takes a look at the new Tim Burton film, Big Eyes - and ( Read more... )

Sometimes, things conspire to create greatness, simply by having all the right people together at the same time...  One of those occasions was during the filming of To Have and Have Not, which is the subject of the latest post at Classically Educated.  Hemingway, Bogart, Faulkner and Bacall... it couldn't have possibly gone wrong with all that ( Read more... )

Slow news week here, so I did a Classically Educated Post about Meet Me In St. Louis, another colorful Judy Garland musical.  While it would be pretty accurate to say that Miss Garland (as she was then) was not my favorite actress by any stretch of the imagination, there were some notable things about the movie.

For those who actually miss my reviews of the movies in the 1001 Movies list, they've moved to Classically Educated, and here is the latest, about The Ox-Bow Incident (it's been generating some comments on Facebook, so it looks like it's a polarizing film; I actually expected it to be a forgotten film).

I have to admit that I wasn't really looking forward to watching 1942's Yankee Doodle Dandy on the 1001 movies list, as it looked like a bit of jingoism for troubled times.  However, while there is an element of patriotic fervor, it is actually an interesting flick about the life and times of George M. Cohan, Broadway giant and author of the title ( Read more... )

I know you're not supposed to say that films on the 1001 movies list are bad, but I can't honestly say I felt anything else about The Magnificent Ambersons.  This film from 1942 is the second in Orson Welles' film career, and is...  not as good as Citizen KaneBasically, it charts the progress of a bunch of rich people who whine that their world is ( Read more... )

Unlike the 1930s, where comedy seemed to be the driving force, the 1940s on the 1001 movies list have opened in a much more serious vein (I assume this was due to the events in Europe at the time), so it's nice to see that even the most serious events, such as the Nazi invasion of Poland could be worthy of satire and laughs.  The 1942 version of To ( Read more... )

I had used the same post title when I watched Gone With the Wind, of course.  I concluded then that Scarlett & co. were great, but perhaps not good.  It's certainly not a movie I'd watch again.

Casablanca, on the other hand ( Read more... )

As most of you know, I often use this space to blast melodrama in its various forms, especially when it makes an appearance on the 1001 films list.  While most critics and the Academy strongly disagree with my tastes, ignoring the comedy and action stuff I usually prefer, I insist that the problem isn't with the dramatic genre itself, but in the ( Read more... )

Once again, as I watch the 1001 films, a film reinforces the idea that the era immediately before and during WWII was dominated by comedy.  The more memorable films of this era all seem to be of the screwball variety.

The Palm Beach Story skates very close to falling foul of the Hayes code, as the happily married couple isn't exactly what it seems ( Read more... )