Norma Desmond has a quote in Sunset Blvd. She says, “We didn’t need dialogue, we had faces.” This line sums up silent films. It also sums up Lon Chaney’s career. He could with any expression, sum up his character’s feelings. There is no better example of this than his greatest role, in The Phantom of […]
Kirk Douglas’ character, Chuck Tatum, lights a match against his typewriter. This gives the audience a foreshadowing of the story. The tale, at its best, shows how journalism works. It is at its worst,how this profession goes for a story that sells papers. Newspapers when this film was released, were the main news source. Most
Hollywood loves to do remakes. Some are better than the original. This is not the case with In the Good Old Summertime. It is a remake of the MGM film, The Shop Around the Corner. It is a big musical production with their big musical star,Judy Garland. She excels in the movie. She does what
There are many people who laugh, when John Wayne is called an actor. Those people have never seen The Shootist. Wayne, in the last film he made, gives one of the finest performances of his career. He plays John Books, a gunfighter. John Wayne over his career, played in many westerns. The majority tell the
Humphrey Bogart was still a star when he made this film. He was famous for playing gangsters, much like his contemporary,James Cagney. Like Cagney, he decided to do a comedy.This movie is the result. His style, doesn’t translate as well to the screen. It is like taking his character of Roy Earle into a comedy.
This movie is the first sound version of the novel,The Three Godfathers. It was remade twice,once in 1936 and in 1948. The 1948 version starred John Wayne, and was in color. This version is grittier and does give realism to the old west. William Wyler insisted on filming in the desert,in August, which must have
This is the Sixth Christmas movie list. This year, the list is movies that aren’t talked about on an annual basis. A person isn’t drinking cocoa with family and friends, discussing these films. The second container of eggnog has probably been opened. The seasonal beer is probably being consumed. A person in their haste to
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What do you get when you conduct nuclear experiments at the north pole? The answer should be more experiments. The answer in this fifties science fiction movie is, a very angry dinosaur. This prehistoric creature is awakened by the blast. His rage causes the death of the research team, except one person, Professor Tom Nesbitt,(Paul
Boris Karloff made horror film respectable. He probably terrified countless children and many adults, playing the Frankenstein monster. There were even members of the cast, who found him scary in makeup. He is, in Bedlam, a different kind of scary. Karloff plays Master George Sims. He is a very creepy man on the fringes of
They Were Expendable is about American military ingenuity and efficiency. It also chronicles one of the lowest points in the history of the military. The story concerns the early use of Patrol Torpedo boats, known as PT boats. They are used to deliver swift attacks against Japanese ships. John Ford, does well showing the battle