Melancholia! Sex! The New Deal! Alcoholism! Brooding Artists! Swedish Modern Furniture! Psychoanalysis! Contraception! Lesbians! The Abraham Lincoln Brigade! The La Leche League! Cocktail Parties! The Theatre with a capital “T”!

The Group (1966-Sidney Lumet) had it all, dear readers, in spades.

At this distance, the gulf between personal and public faces and the political skirmishes touched on in this movie between Trotskyites, Stalinists, socialists and the battle of the sexes seems even more long ago and far away than it must have appeared in the 1960s. Still, I couldn’t help being drawn into the story, thanks largely to the talented cast and the sometimes uneven but breezy, episodic nature of the movie.

READ MORE

Last week I had the opportunity to screen a 16mm print of Breaking Away (1979) in my backyard. This is the film that inspired me as a kid to get into bicycling. I seem to recall seeing the film three or four times in the theater upon its first release, and then that was it – I left it alone. Now 30 years later here I am watching it again, and maybe just a tad nervous that this movie that I held so dear might reveal itself to be a hopelessly dated cheese-fest. About 40 people showed up and I’m happy to report that the film holds up up to mature scrutiny and even garnered a hearty applause from the crowd as the end credits rolled on by. READ MORE

“What do you know about love? I think love is watching your child go off to school for the first time alone… sitting beside a sick kid’s bed waiting for the doctor, praying it isn’t polio… or that cold chill you get when you hear the screech of brakes, and know your kid’s outside on the street some place… and a lot of other things you get can’t get out of books, ’cause nobody knows how to write ‘em down.”

~John Wayne as Steve Aloysius Williams in Trouble Along the Way (1953)
READ MORE