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This week, we kick off our John Ford Director of 2022 series with Fort Apache (1948), The Informer (1935), and The Fugitive (1947).

In that interesting way the subconscious works, we didn’t realize this when we programmed this week but all three movies center around…

As one of the standard-bearers of the Romanian New Wave, writer-director Radu Jude, has been key in the creation of several of the most interesting films of the last fifteen years or so. It’s entirely unsurprising that one his first jobs was as an assistant director for The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, certainly among the most well-received films of that movement and, arguably, of the best of this still young century. Though he achieved notice for his first short film, the neorealism influenced…

Because the history of the Motion Picture Production Code has been well-covered many times over in the nebulous elsewhere, the following summary of the same here is purposefully brief but, I think, necessary to put the delightfully odd film, The Sin of Nora Moran, into some kind of context.

Briefly, a groundswell of moral panic toward Hollywood films (and personalities) of the late 1920s bred the formation of a self-regulated agency to impose restrictions on what could and, more significantly, could not be shown on cinema screens. The post-silent years before the strictures were firmly cemented is generally known as the Pre-Code Era. In this era, movies began tackling more controversial subject matter and, consequently, stretching out in their storytelling. Villains didn’t always die at the end and sometimes terrible things happened to undeserving people. Et cetera, et cetera. A counterpoint might validly contend that Hollywood was slavishly embracing ever more lurid elements to pander to their paying audiences.

The Sin of Nora Moran materializes in 1933, a breath away…

Headwinds? Check. Nearly insurmountable obstacles? Check. A funky time in American culture? Triple whammy.

But that’s exactly why 2022 can be the year that cinema, movies, the movie going experience comes roaring back.

I’m not writing this to convince you. I’m…

Well, we’re done with the Christmas Carol films, we are done with Halloween films. It’s like a vacation!

The very first film I saw in this new year of 2022, was the new Spider-Man film, Spider-Man: No Way Home. The trailer was fantastic, and I decided…

In the spring of 1987, an interesting event happened in the world of British cinema which I don’t believe has any precedent or echo. Released within a few months of each other, Personal Services and Wish You Were Here, were led by a different set of directors and actors but the screenplays were both written by David Leland, and ‘loosely’ based on different periods of the same contemporary, real-world person’s life. There are countless examples of…

Last night, I realized I had not seen nearly enough new 2021 movies.

So I planted myself down in our family lazy boy at 10pm, looked at my list of movies I wanted to catch up on, and watched Pig, the indescribably funny, wise, emotional, and moving comedy drama starring Nicolas Cage, Alex Wolff, co-written and directed by Michael Sarnoski.

Pig is…

Born as a commoner in a land of royalty, one person in the San Fernando Valley…

Yes, I know that by the time this posts Christmas will be done and gone and we will be looking forward to New Years, but I cannot stop before posting my two all-time fave versions of the story, the Scrooges of Albert Finney, and the great and glorious Alistair Sim (and after all Christmas really does last until January 6th so…

This month, it was heartening and humbling to see so many committed people come out to watch Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 15 hour Berlin Alexanderplatz , Ingmar Bergman’s 5 hour and 20 minute full television version of Fanny and Alexander , and Kyrzstof Kieslowski’s 10 hour The Decalogue.

These television works, by world famous directors obsess me. The longer television form allows for a kind of exploration, expression, experimentation that can yield some of the most mysterious and intriguing fruits.

I’ve always had an informal rule…