Being Film #27 for Hooptober 2025 I don't need to re-watch The Wizard Of Oz to recall with perfect clarity the impact of the flying monkeys had on my six-year-old psyche. I suspect for a large group of people my age watching the film was an annual tradition: VCRs and cable television were still uncommon... Continue Reading →
Being Film #17 for Hooptober 2025 Sometimes a movie is so good, it doesn't matter the condition you see it. In a world of 4K, Dolby Vision, IMAX, and other buzzwords for the highest of definitions, a picture ultimately rests on its construction and execution. That being said, I wish some of that visual pizzazz... Continue Reading →
Being Film #18 for Hooptober 2023 The marathon called for a movie that had "X" in the title, and it was the perfect time to bring out a DVD I had for yers but never watched: my beloved Humphrey Bogart taking on horror in The Return of Doctor X. My heart knew this wasn't going... Continue Reading →
Being Film #10 for Hooptober 2023 Let's face it: for a streaming service Shudder has some of the best curation you can get. You might not think a film is horrific enough for a horror channel, but you're always getting something interesting. I'll take the latter any day, and Saloum is a great example of... Continue Reading →
Being Film #9 for Hooptober 2023 Every few years I come back to Mad Love, the creepy dream horror that landed Petter Lorre in front of the majority of US moviegoers and served as the final feature outing as a director for cinematic genius Karl Freund. The film holds a special place in my heart:... Continue Reading →
What's in a list, anyway? It's something I've struggled with throughout my time as an online writer. But when you're considering a set list of, as the BFI so brazenly puts it, the greatest films of all time, it becomes apparent that a list - any list - must encompass both a sense of inflexibility... Continue Reading →
Ladies and gentlemen, to close out Hooptober (well, I still have a few movies to write about), my wife and I participated in a movie marathon at our local drive-in. Every year, Silver Moon Drive-In in Lakeland, Florida uses its two screens to host Halloween movie marathons. One screen usually shows older Universal monster movies... Continue Reading →
When you watch a classic Universal horror film, you have certain expectations of them. Monstrous figures wander gothic backdrops. Expressionist lighting and excessive fog create ghostly atmosphere. These films are meant to evoke “the old world” or the horrors of science gone wrong. There’s exactly one scene like that in Dracula’s Daughter. Gloria Holden’s Countess... Continue Reading →
Watching Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth I was brought back to those weekends with my dad. He passed down to me my love for Cary Grant, watching films like Father Goose and Mr. Lucky and North By Northwest. We had nothing else in common, so I clung to those stars and movies and absorbed them... Continue Reading →
Cinema Dual 