Favorite Discoveries of 2022

If you don’t follow me on any other platform outside of this blog, you might not realize how many movies I watch each year outside of new releases—so many, in fact, that I wonder why I bother subscribing to any other streaming service when I increasingly spend the bulk of my time inside of the […]

Holiday Classics: “Christmas Eve” (1947)

“Christmas Eve” isn’t actually as Christmas-y of a movie as its title suggests, the holiday setting more serving as a catalyst to pull a few seemingly disparate stories together and only really becoming apparent in the final scene. The 1947 film, which was also released under the title “Sinner’s Holiday,” from director Edwin L. Marin […]

Holiday Classics: “Blast of Silence” (1961)

“Remember out of the black silence you were born in pain. You were born with hate and anger built in. Took a slap on the backside to blast out the scream. And then you knew you were alive.” Lionel Stander’s bitter opening narration to the 1961 noir “Blast of Silence” is backed by the sound […]

Holiday Classics: “Cover Up” (1949)

Small towns make ideal settings for all manner of stories. They’re the perfect picturesque location for light-hearted holiday affair, with charming homes and storefronts all aglow. They’re also the perfect spot to situate a murder mystery, the friendly facades and the fact that everyone knows everyone giving way to suspicion and doubt. The 1949 noir […]

Holiday Classics: “Lady on a Train” (1945)

From the late 1930s through the early 1940s, Deanna Durbin was one of the silver screen’s most popular young stars. After an appearance in a 1936 short subject titled “Every Sunday” showcased her stunningly mature operatic voice (opposite the more pop-oriented but equally impressive sounds of another young star in the making, Judy Garland), the […]

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: “Nightmare Alley” (2021)

If Guillermo Del Toro’s previous feature film, “The Shape of Water,” was about the perseverance of love and humanizing monsters, his latest movie, “Nightmare Alley,” is about as opposite to that as one can get. Based on William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel, which was also adapted into a 1947 film of the same name, “Nightmare […]

Noirvember: “The Big Sleep” (1946)

The first time I watched “The Big Sleep”, it ended and I realized I had no idea who the murderer was. Every time I rewatch it I get lost as to what exactly is going on at certain points in the story. Attempting to read a plot synopsis of the movie makes my brain want […]

Noirvember: “Mildred Pierce” (1945)

Joan Crawford wanted the role of Mildred Pierce badly. But by the time Warner Brothers began production on the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s novel, Crawford was considered a bit of a has-been. She hadn’t starred in a film in two years, since she had been let go of her MGM contract. Furthermore, the director of “Mildred […]

Noirvember: “The Blue Dahlia” (1946)

There’s a funny story that goes along with the making of “The Blue Dahlia”. Novelist Raymond Chandler was hired to write the screenplay for a film noir; despite several of his novels being adapted into films before, this was the first time he wrote something specifically for the screen. Midway through, Chandler got writer’s block. The […]