Free At Last

January 10, 2009

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Witness for the Prosecution, 1957 - ★★★★½
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Hey, it’s an impeccable Billy Wilder movie!Charles Laughton is extremely special here, solidifying the tradition of the brilliant right-minded asshole. He’s fallible and not actually the smartest person in the room anymore. We meet him being a jerk to Elsa Lancaster as his nurse, and it’s a meaningful choice that she’s clearly right and he’s […]
Litan, 1982 - ★★★½
November 16, 2024
It’s a Gahan Wilson cartoon come to life, with grotesqueries literally around every corner of the claustrophobic European town. In the end there’s a comprehensible plot, but I was perfectly happy with pure dread for the first couple of acts. Every Mocky movie I’ve seen has been claustrophobic and tense; the initial absence of explanations […]
High Sierra, 1941 - ★★★★
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I’ve always loved that flavor of crime movie where the criminals are framed as businessmen, before Puzo recalibrated the American imagination. This is that, with an entire secret economy bubbling along under the surface. Everyone knows a guy who knows the guy.On my second viewing, I had time to appreciate the nuances of Lupino and […]
The Green Knight, 2021 - ★★★★
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When I was significantly younger, I was all in on Arthurian myth. I was young enough to believe that I could read every work based on the legends, and I badly wanted to; I’ve read Wolfram von Eschenbach‘s Parzival. Not in the original German. What I’m saying is that I dig the Grail Knight.There’s so […]
The Landlord, 1970 - ★★★★½
November 14, 2024
Bill Gunn didn’t miss. About halfway through The Landlord, it became clear that this wasn’t a story about a callow rich white kid who learned how to live a satisfying life from a bunch of poor black folks. (Credit also to Kristin Hunter, author of the original novel.) The first act is funny, and mostly […]