A belated link to my final contribution to the Childhood Films countdown at Wonders in the Dark–at number four, it’s one of my favorite movies of all time, adapted from one of my favorite books, 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird: I don’t think it’s too far off the mark to label To Kill a Mockingbird one…
My fourth and final contribution to Wonders in the Dark’s romantic film countdown was posted earlier today. At #3, it’s Charlie Chaplin’s seminal masterwork City Lights (1931): There are ostensibly two romances at work in City Lights–both of which admittedly play backseat to the comedic elements that dominate the majority of the film (the movie is not…
My third post for the ongoing romantic films countdown at Wonders in the Dark is live. At number five, it’s F.W. Murnau’s lovely and deceptively simple silent allegory Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927): Out of context, the idea of ranking a film in which a man is seduced into plotting to kill his wife as one…
“I never told you I was anything but what I am. You just wanted to imagine I was.” That claim, uttered by Jane Greer as the devious Kathie Moffat in director Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, is not entirely true. The character is an exercise in self-construction, spending much of the film behind an array of…
My second post for the ongoing romantic films countdown at Wonders in the Dark is up now. At number 32, it’s Frank Capra’s seminal sexy screwball classic, It Happened One Night (1934). Night has been cited as one of the founding pictures of the screwball genre, and indeed, many of the elements that would come to define…
“Yes, this is Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California. It’s about five o’clock in the morning. That’s the Homicide Squad, complete with detectives and newspapermen. A murder has been reported from one of those great big houses in the ten-thousand block. You’ll read about it in the late editions, I’m sure. You’ll get it over your…
Last week, the True Classics crew–all four of us–gathered in Birmingham at the historic Alabama Theatre to see the 1962 classic To Kill a Mockingbird on the big screen. Seeing films at the Alabama is an experience. There really is no other word for it. Stepping into the lavishly redecorated lobby–restored to its early splendor in…
Thursday night, as part of a nationwide event sponsored by TCM, NCM Fathom, and Warner Bros., I had the pleasure of seeing Singin’ in the Rain (1952) on the big screen. Although I am very familiar with one of the happiest songs ever produced, I had never before seen the musical that it inspired.…
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