A few months back I wrote a post on The Other Great Performance in the Movie, about great performances (usually by supporting actors) in movies with famously great lead performances.  I’d like to further that theme now, only with great scenes.   Last night, my wife, daughter and I took in Black Narcissus at the […]

The movies are now and have always been eager to please.   They want you to like them, even if they’re giving you a bit of history along with the entertainment.  They want you to know they have you in mind no matter what, and when I say “you,” I don’t mean whoever is watching […]

I shouldn’t do this, I really shouldn’t.  I’m leaving on a long trip today, heading out for a couple of days to retrieve my stepdaughter from college and bring her back home.  What little free time I’ll have online will be mainly concerned with quick surfing, facebook notifications, e-mails and the like.  So I shouldn’t […]

When people talk about a great supporting character, the character can be good or bad.  The character of Mr. Potter in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life is a great supporting character brought to full life in a magnificent performance delivered by Lionel Barrymore.   But he’s also the King of Jerks.  A selfish, scheming, […]

Recently, on April 27th, director Steven Soderbergh gave a speech at the San Francisco International Film Festival about the state of cinema.  In it, he discusses the changes in cinema that have occured in his lifetime and the effect they’ve had on him and the movie-going public as a whole.  The speech has many great moments […]

I’ve been writing for some time now and in the last decade or so of feverish online opinion, I’ve learned a couple of things about myself and others when it comes to discussing films.  One, I’ve learned that there is nary a movie in existence that isn’t like by someone and, two, panning a movie, […]

With the release of Oblivion, and its plot point of the moon’s destruction, I was reminded of a piece I wrote a couple of years ago for a DVD company about George Pal and one of the things I mentioned was a statement by Ray Bradbury about Destination Moon.  What Bradbury said was that it […]

Having studied theater for years, and performing in many a play, I have always had a fascination with actors who become personas.  There are character actors who take on a thousand different roles in the course of the career and lead actors who weave in and out of hundreds of different characters, each one unique, […]

I’m not even sure I understand what I’m about to ask but here goes:  Have you ever watched a movie that was better than another movie but you thought the movie that’s not as good as the better movie is better than the one that’s better? Huh? To wit:  I think goodfellas is a better […]