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I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955)
The frank, revealing story of Lillian Roth's life! Best-seller now a film sensation.
Filmmaker(s): Daniel Mann

Deprived of a normal childhood by her ambitious mother, Lillian Roth becomes a star of Broadway and Hollywood before she is twenty. Shortly before her marriage to her childhood sweetheart, David Tredman, he dies and Lillian takes her first drink of many down the road of becoming an alcoholic.

Drunk on Acting love movies. I love getting caught up in the all the cinematic flows that filmmakers know how to weave. But the things I value and study in film are the things that are cinematic. Some movies aren’t movies. They’re distributed and displayed as...


Published December 1, 2022
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Alice in Wonderland (1951)
A world of wonders in one great picture!

On a golden afternoon, young Alice follows a White Rabbit, who disappears down a nearby rabbit hole. Quickly following him, she tumbles into the burrow - and enters the merry, topsy-turvy world of Wonderland! Memorable songs and whimsical escapades highlight Alice's journey, which culminates in a madcap encounter with the Queen of Hearts - and her army of playing cards!

Charlie’s Flowers spent a goodly part of my life becoming an expert in the Alice material, so have had to work to temper this comment: My initial feeling on this project is one of utter despair, as Walt and company took something that was both...


Published November 30, 2022
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The Hideous Sun Demon (1958)
The Blaze Of The Sun Made Him A Monster!

After exposure to radiation, an atomic research scientist finds himself changing into a murderous, lizard-like creature every time he is exposed to sunlight.

Rays of these old things are great. The absolute maturity of the genre creates a purity that you can see because all the normal movie stuff (plot, acting, story, production) falls away and you deal with the saints and angels of the cinematic universe. But that’s...


Published November 29, 2022
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Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
There was nothing to hold onto - except each other.
Filmmaker(s): Don Siegel

A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.

<strong>Pods, Plots and Plodders in a while Hollywood produces a movie that decades later gets adopted by American industrialised secondary education. That’s because teachers confuse various notions of ideas and think that movies are a great teaching tool. So to teach the evils of...


Published November 26, 2022
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Hiroshima Mon Amor (1959)
From the measureless depths of a woman's emotions...
Filmmaker(s): Alain Resnais

The deep conversation between a Japanese architect and a French actress forms the basis of this celebrated French film, considered one of the vanguard productions of the French New Wave. Set in Hiroshima after the end of World War II, the couple -- lovers turned friends -- recount, over many hours, previous romances and life experiences. The two intertwine their stories about the past with pondering the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb dropped on the city.

The Pull of Connection saw this thirty or so years ago. I don’t remember it moving me profoundly, but then so many things at that age routinely inject you with massive change without you knowing. Seeing it now gives me great, great appreciation for what...


Published November 25, 2022
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An Inspector Calls (1954)
Is he real... or the creature of conscience?
Filmmaker(s): Guy Hamilton

An upper-crust family dinner is interrupted by a police inspector who brings news that a girl known to everyone present has died in suspicious circumstances. It seems that any or all of them could have had a hand in her death. But who is the mysterious Inspector and what can he want of them?

Inspecting the Story you want to understand film, the first thing on the list is narrative structure, specifically cinematically structured narrative. If I were teaching in film school, I would introduce this subject in a semester’s worth of detective narrative. Nowhere are more tricks pulled, more...


Published November 24, 2022
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Ikiru (1952)
A big story of a little man which will grip your soul ...
Filmmaker(s): Akira Kurosawa

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.

Bad Kurosawa what a curse to be a genius! Here we have a nearly perfect film, perfect in all the ordinarily engineered respects. It is rather haunting, and if you choose to watch it you will find it memorable. But Kurosawa is not merely a...


Published October 27, 2022
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Trents Last Case (1952)
A Woman's Kiss That Killed
Filmmaker(s): Herbert Wilcox

When a wealthy business man is found dead reporter Philip Trent is sent to investigate. Against the police conclusions, he suspects the assumed suicide is really a murder, and becomes highly interested in the young widow and the dead man's private secretary.

Hidden should be a superb movie in the mystery tradition. It has a truly complex plot that has several reveals, and a suitably Holmes-like detective. The problem is that we see the detective working things out like a Poirot would. But we learn absolutely nothing...


Published September 30, 2022
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Indestructible Man (1956)
The Screen's 300,000 Volt SHOCKER!
Filmmaker(s): Jack Pollexfen

A scientific experiment involving subjecting a corpse to an extreme charge of electricity accidentally revives an executed criminal and makes him impervious to harm, allowing him to seek revenge on his former partners, and deal similarly with anyone else who gets in his way.

Jack Webb at 287,000 Volts is an absolutely horrid little film, not worth watching. It is a cheap blend of “Frankenstein” and the popular TeeVee show “Dragnet”, with a little “Third Man” thrown in. Dragnet started as a radio show and this project would have...


Published July 3, 2022
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I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)
Shuddery things from beyond the stars, here to breed with human women!
Filmmaker(s): Gene Fowler Jr.

Aliens from Outer Space are slowly switching places with real humans -- one of the first being a young man about to get married. Slowly, his new wife realizes something is wrong, and her suspicions are confirmed when her husband's odd behaviour begins to show up in other townspeople.

Watching Them Watching Us suppose there are many ways of watching movies as there are of eating, a lot. But most folks seem to do it quickly, without savour. So from time to time it is worth watching an old movie with little merit just...


Published May 16, 2022
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