Movies@Home
It has been a year since Erich von Stroheim’s Greed entered the public domain and still the Gods of Cinema remain sound asleep at the switch. More than two-thirds of the legendary 9+ hour epic …
My first entry for 2022 was originally intended for another trio of last year’s leftovers. But my steed blew a flat before making it to the finish line of The Green Knight. One can only …
Let’s end the year batting cleanup on three of this year’s oddities and curiosities, starting with a request. Several months ago, Lydia D’moch wrote asking why I never got around to reviewing Lamb. It opened …
The most challenging component of being my stickling, anal-retentive moviegoing self has been this dumbfounding devotion to logic and historical continuity that rides roughshod inside my skull. The trailer to Sing spoke to me, saying, …
During an audience Q&A at the Chicago International Film Festival, Robert Wise was asked why he chose to open both West Side Story and The Sound of Music with tapering views from above. “Because I …
A friend recently linked me to a collection of Sunday newspaper TV ads, and I chanced upon a half-pager from November 1973 pitching a late show airing of The Young Lions, in which Marlon Brando …
Like most Americans, rather than fortify the pre-feedbag portion of Thanksgiving Day with parades and sporting events, I chose to gorge on 2-D transfers of two dozen or so impeccably restored-to-blu-ray 3-D curios. Why 2-D? …
Rather than calling this week’s column a homework assignment, look upon it as a chance to reacquaint yourself with one of cinema’s founding fathers, the man who gave editing its pulse, a purveyor in Russian …
Speaking with Christian McKay was the closest I would ever come to meeting Orson Welles in this lifetime. McKay (pronounced “Mc-KYE”) made his screen debut in Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles, a boffo pre-Citizen …
This week’s trio skipped town before I could get around to covering them. Coming soon to a blu-ray or streaming service near you. Drive My Car (2021) In the shadows of their bedroom, a Japanese …
Let’s harken back to a time when DVDs were arranged on the rental rack spine side out and alphabetically by title. One never knew what unknown riches were just a lateral scan of the eye …
I am a sucker for 3-D. The eye sees in three dimensions, why shouldn’t a moviegoer? Three of the five major technological advances that cinema would undergo in the first 126 years of its history …
To celebrate the release of the 27th James Bond film, might I humbly suggest that some time before or after you make time for No Time to Die, that you spend 142 minutes in the …
It’s all out there somewhere: the Pomona preview print of The Magnificent Ambersons; the missing reels of Eric von Stroheim’s Greed; Lon Chaney’s uncut London After Midnight; even the pie fight from Dr. Strangelove is …
“Testing! Testing!” The voice still worked. No sign of hearing impairment either. It was 3:50 p.m. and in the time it took to tilt my head clockward, a nurse was at my side. “Would you …
What can be said of an ensemble drama in which Milton Berle gives the best performance? Or a searing indictment of the Oscars that couldn’t have been made without producer Joseph E. Levine first obtaining …