Holiday Classics: “Hell’s Heroes” (1929)

If you like your holiday movies bleak and uncompromising, look no farther than 1929’s Hell’s Heroes. The early talking picture is a western based on the 1931 novel The Three Godfathers by Peter B. Kyne, but it’s actually one of several screen adaptations of the story, whose Christmas setting, religious imagery (look no further than […]

Holiday Classics: “Cash on Demand” (1961)

Hammer Film Productions is the British studio primarily known for breathing new life into classic movie monsters that were generally Universal’s forte over in the States with their gory color productions beginning in the late 1950s such as The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, and many others. But while in the decades since Hammer horror has […]

Review: “Eileen”

When we first meet Eileen Dunlop (Thomasin McKenzie), she’s sitting in her car by the chilly New England seaside, shoving a handful of snow down her skirt after witnessing a couple making out in another car parked nearby. Later, at her job at a local corrections facility, she fantasizes about the attractive guard on duty, […]

Holiday Classics: “My Reputation” (1946)

Barbara Stanwyck’s roles in the romantic holiday comedies Christmas in Connecticut and Remember the Night are more than enough to cement her as Old Hollywood’s Christmas queen, but if you dig a little deeper, several of her other films boast seasonal settings that make them perfect annual watches. One of Stanwyck’s most underrated, in terms […]

Review: “May December”

Most cinematic retellings of true stories traffic in impersonation. And we, as a culture, reward that. Praise isn’t necessarily heaped on an actor for the soulfulness and honesty of their performance, but for how closely they arrive at an approximation of what we perceive to be real. Think about how so many of the most […]

Holiday Classics: “Larceny, Inc.” (1942)

If you were to hear the title Larceny, Inc., you likely wouldn’t immediately cop it as a Christmas movie. And yet, this crime comedy’s seasonal appropriateness is immediately evident from the name of its source material: The Night Before Christmas, a short-lived Broadway play penned by Laura and S.J. Perelman. Edward G. Robinson stars in […]

Review: “Saltburn”

Gloomy atmosphere, haunted castles, grotesque characters, cursed families, doomed romances— these elements and more have come to define the gothic genre, the first entry into which is generally considered to be English writer Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. Walpole’s tale of the lord of a manor and his family was inspired by […]

SLIFF Review: “La Chimera”

The most recognizable definition of a chimera comes from Greek mythology, in reference to a female creature made up of several different animals: a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. But the word can alternately be used as a noun to refer to something one hopes for, but is impossible to ever […]

SLIFF Review: “The Holdovers”

In a lengthy pre-film discussion and post-film Q&A with director Alexander Payne at a screening of his new film The Holdovers at the St. Louis International Film Festival, several films and filmmakers came up in reference to his work, from Billy Wilder to Leo McCarey’s devastating 1937 drama about aging, Make Way for Tomorrow. But […]

Home Video Review: “The Unknown Country”

The snow crunches beneath her feet as Tana (Lily Gladstone) steps into her car. She pauses as she glances at the handicapped tag hanging on the rearview mirror before quietly removing it. A voice on the radio details the perilous weather conditions, but as night turns to day and the snow becomes blindingly white, Tana […]