Month: May 2020

!!! A+ FILM !!! The Killing is both a beginning and an end for Stanley Kubrick; although he made two earlier features, one barely released and one that briefly rotated on the B-grade circuit, this is the first of his films that matters in any broader sense, and the one that effectively launched his career […]… Continue reading The Killing (1956, Stanley Kubrick) — Slices of Cake

!!! A+ FILM !!! It took multiple nights for me to make it through Early Summer, not at all a boring film and hardly a long one (just over two hours), first because it has been a very troubling and stressful few days, secondly because I was so overwhelmed by its beauty and gravity that […]… Continue reading Early Summer (1951, Yasujiro Ozu) — Slices of Cake

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED To make a very 1940s analogy, the differing interpretations and uses of Humphrey Bogart by various great directors are not terribly dissimilar in scope to those of fellow Warner Bros. star Bugs Bunny; Bugs was a distinctive, iconic character but also a malleable one, and Friz Freleng’s Bugs is eventually very easy to […]… Continue reading Key Largo (1948, John Huston) — Slices of Cake

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal is sometimes viewed, along with certain early works of Kurosawa and Fellini, as the film that launched arthouse and foreign cinema as viable fixtures of cultural conversation in America, at least in the big cities and among the intellectual classes; it’s hard to say whether it was as […]… Continue reading The Seventh Seal (1957, Ingmar Bergman) — Slices of Cake

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED The setting of Robert Zemeckis’ debut film is New York City on February 9, 1964, the night of the Beatles’ first performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, the bellwether event of the British Invasion and of the re-ignition of rock & roll in general. A group of New Jersey teenagers descend on CBS […]… Continue reading I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978, Robert Zemeckis) — Slices of Cake

RECOMMENDED Of Shakespeare’s major tragedies, Macbeth is perhaps the least enjoyable to read. Seeing it performed may well be a different matter, but keeping in mind that criticizing Shakespeare is a fool’s errand and is of course meant in a strictly relative sense, the play feels rushed and even perfunctory in its early stages, perhaps […]… Continue reading Throne of Blood (1957, Akira Kurosawa) — Slices of Cake

!!! A+ FILM !!! John Boorman’s film of James Dickey’s brooding, terrifying novel Deliverance is both one of the most perfectly realized of all American movies and perhaps the most successful example of a major work adapted for cinema into another major work. The language in Dickey’s novel is photographic in its evocation of place, […]… Continue reading Deliverance (1972, John Boorman) — Slices of Cake

Introducing Miserable Commentary! Watch along with us as we talk over your favorite horror movies… trust me, it’s better than it sounds. First up, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter! via Miserable Commentary! Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter — Miserable Pile of Secrets

When the shelter in place orders came down in California, everyone settled in and immediately started looking for a distraction. Binge watching Netflix was an obvious choice. So was drinking. Baking bread became an unexpected trend that had the power to unite and, in some cases, unhinge people. But I did not want my […] via… Continue reading My Shelter in Place Diversion – Every Film Featuring Jeremy Irons — Phases Like The moon

Sweetheart tells the tale of a girl stranded on a normal looking island which is however the hunting grounds for a mysterious creature which emerges every night from the depths of the ocean. via “Sweetheart” a welcomed refresher for horror fans — FijiTaiment