Holiday Classics: “The Apartment” (1960)

No other Christmas film, no matter how bleak, walks quite as delicate a line between pathos and pleasure as Billy Wilder’s bittersweet 1960 comedy The Apartment. The film centers around C.C. “Bud” Baxter (Jack Lemmon), a lonely pushover who works as an office drone at a New York City insurance company. He allows his managers […]

Holiday Classics: “Our Vines Have Tender Grapes” (1945)

Our Vines Have Tender Grapes is exactly the sort of heart-warming family drama MGM excelled at. That may make it sound overly trite and sentimental, but the film is crafted with such earnest sincerity, from its skilled performances to its charming vintage production design, in which studio soundstages stand in for rural Wisconsin. That’s where […]

Holiday Classics: “Backfire” (1950)

The bulk of the action in Backfire may occur over the early days of January, but the holidays are a recurring backdrop over the course of this 1950 noir directed by Vincent Sherman. Gordon MacRae (in only his third feature film and on the brink of becoming a big musical star) and genre staple Edmond […]

Holiday Classics: “The Thin Man” (1934)

I’ve watched The Thin Man countless times. But I’ll confess, if you put a gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you who the killer is revealed to be at the end of this sophisticated whodunit. That isn’t so much a failing of the storytelling as it is an indication that the mystery runs secondary […]

Holiday Classics: “Never Say Goodbye” (1946)

Errol Flynn is a star known primarily for swashbuckling adventures, westerns, and war movies that showcased his machismo physicality and roguish charm— films like Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). As pitch perfect as he is in those films, it’s a delight to watch […]

Venice 2025: “Kim Novak’s Vertigo”

The enigmatic black-and-white portrait of its subject that Kim Novak’s Vertigo opens with speaks louder than words. Its date is uncertain, but based on her appearance, the footage originates from somewhere in the vicinity of the peak of her success in Hollywood, the girl who made a detour to Tinsel Town for fun while touring […]

Notes on “Red-Headed Woman” (1932)

Below, you can find some of my notes from a brief talk I recently gave preceding a screening of 1932’s Red-Headed Woman at East Central College in Union, Missouri. This was actually the second time I’ve had the chance to present this movie— a true pillar of pre-Code cinema, for many reasons— and it was […]

Holiday Classics: “The Curse of the Cat People” (1944)

Cat People was a big box office hit for RKO Pictures when it was released in 1942. The horror film, stylishly directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton (the mind behind the studio’s successful run of B genre films), has been hugely influential in the decades since its release, from its dive into […]

Holiday Classics: “I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes” (1948)

You should never throw your shoes at a cat, no matter how much their midnight meowing keeps you up at night. You especially shouldn’t do it if you’re Tom Quinn (Don Castle), a struggling tap dancer who sits at home anxiously awaiting the return of his taxi dancer wife Ann (Elyse Knox) from work, where […]

Holiday Classics: “Mr. Soft Touch”

Mr. Soft Touch is technically a film noir— it opens with a stunningly tense car chase shot on location in the streets of San Francisco following a robbery committed by the protagonist to even the score after he returns home from fighting in World War II to find his partner missing and his nightclub overtaken […]