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 →
Hooptober 2022 Universal Monster Drive In Extravaganza (#39-43)
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 →
Hooptober 2022 #23: Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
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 →
Criterion Catch-Up: The Awful Truth (1937)
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 →