I Know Where I’m Going!
Our film of the week at The Cinessential is Bill Forsythe’s Local Hero. It’s not a film I’m familiar with (though many of my colleagues’ glowing essays have piqued by interest in it), so I instead tackled our related review and wrote about the Archers’ 1945 film I Know Where I’m Going! Click here to […]
Odd Man Out Review
RATING: (4 STARS) It’s finally happening: Director Carol Reed is getting the recognition he deserves. Of course, it’s only 60 or 70 years too late to make a difference in his career. And of course, I’m only referring to the small (but sometimes deafening) community that goes nuts over things like auteurship, black and white […]
Night Train to Munich Review
RATING: (4 STARS) Night Train to Munich shows what would happen if you dropped Mission: Impossible‘s Ethan Hunt into Europe during WWII. Rex Harrison is Tom Cruise’s stand-in, and though the Oscar winner (for My Fair Lady) isn’t exactly Superman, he’s a more-than-capable hero. This film is a lot of fun. It’s perhaps atypical for […]
Foreign Correspondent Review
RATING: (4 STARS) For a film that frequently goes way over the top, Foreign Correspondent is still an exceptional piece of work. It’s very much what you’d expect from a Hitchcock film (international intrigue, questions of identity, and an ordinary man getting caught up in something much bigger than himself), but it contains some amazing […]
The Best Years of Our Lives Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) Sometimes the hardest thing for a soldier isn’t surviving the war—it’s coming back home when it’s over. This theme has been explored dozens of times (including very recently in The Hurt Locker), but one of the first to do so was William Wyler’s Best Picture-winning The Best Years of Our Lives. The […]
The Lady from Shanghai Review
RATING: (4 STARS) Ask anyone other than a serious film buff, and they will tell you Orson Welles only made one great film, his first, “Citizen Kane.†That’s understandable. “Kane†is arguably one of the greatest films ever made. But the actor/writer/director’s resume is more than just that, and saying otherwise is a great disservice […]
Double Indemnity Review
RATING: (4 STARS) Everyone knows film noir. Film fans have enjoyed (or been subjected to, depending on your tastes) its conventions for decades. From Humphrey Bogart’s famous line, “It’s the stuff dreams are made of†in The Maltese Falcon through the present day’s machinations of film noir, like the twisted noir-comedy Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, […]
