Holiday Classics: “Repeat Performance” (1947)

Have you ever reached the end of the year and wished you could go back and do it all over again? That wish is granted to Joan Leslie’s Sheila Page in “Repeat Performance,” a 1947 film noir with a unique supernatural bent that might best be described as “It’s a Wonderful Life” meets “The Twilight […]

Review: “Blonde”

Kim Kardashian stirred up controversy for the gown she chose to wear to the Met Gala earlier this year, although not because of the look itself. The buzz came, rather, courtesy of the gown’s origins: it was the same nude-colored, beaded dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in 1962, when she famously sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. […]

All Together Now: TCMFF 2022 Recap

It’s safe to say that I wouldn’t be here writing about movies at all if it wasn’t for Turner Classic Movies. Watching the channel sparked my interest in film, taught me more than I ever learned in school, and allowed me to see movies I might have never watched otherwise. After spending the better part […]

Holiday Classics: “The Silent Partner” (1978)

“The Silent Partner” was a sleeper hit when it was released in the United States in 1978, but it seems like it has gained more recognition in recent years, and rightly so. The Canadian production- which one three Canadian Film Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and was one of the first movies produced under Canada’s Capitol […]

Holiday Classics: “Room for One More” (1952)

Believe it or not, 1941’s “Penny Serenade” was not the only movie Cary Grant starred in in which he plays a husband overcome with the care of an orphan or two. But while in “Penny Serenade” he played a new husband averse to the idea of having children, in 1952’s “Room for One More,” he […]

Holiday Classics: “Penny Serenade” (1941)

When I first became interested in classic film, I’d stalk the forums on tcm.com in an attempt to seek out movies to watch. Anytime the subject of tearjerkers came up, it seemed like the first and most discussed movie was a film that would likely have otherwise flown under my radar: the 1941 drama “Penny Serenade,” directed […]

Holiday Classics: “The Holly and the Ivy” (1952)

“The Holly and the Ivy” centers around a dysfunctional family gathering for the holidays, but while many movies play this concept for laughs, this 1952 British film directed by George More O’Ferrall from a play by Wynyard Browne is a melancholy drama. But that doesn’t mean that the film doesn’t end with the requisite dose […]

Holiday Classics: ”On Moonlight Bay” (1951)

“On Moonlight Bay” has often been written off as a less-impressive copy-cat of another holiday staple, 1944’s “Meet Me in St. Louis.” The reasons for this are obvious, because the two films share some remarkable similarities. Both are musicals set over the course of one year in a turn-of-the-century Midwestern family’s life, divided into chapters […]

Holiday Classics: ”The Cheaters” (1945)

I’ve heard some people say that they aren’t a fan of “The Cheaters”— a 1945 Christmas screwball comedy from Republic Pictures, a studio known at the time primarily for making B westerns starring the likes of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers— because the characters in it can be pretty insufferable. The review that ran in The […]

Holiday Classics: “On the Twelfth Day” (1955)

If it wasn’t for Mark Cousins’ extensive 2019 documentary series “Women Make Film,” I would likely have never become aware of “On the Twelfth Day,” a delightful short film that serves as a farcical interpretation of the song “The 12 Days of Christmas.” In the documentary, “On the Twelfth Day” is brought up at the […]