Films That Matter
Night Terrors
Unlike most other memorable Hammer horror movies, the 1964 mystery thriller Nightmare, directed by Freddie Francis (perhaps better known as the cinematographer of films like David Lynch’s The Elephant Man and Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear) eliminates all of the monsters for an old fashioned quasi ghost story... the piece deserving to be remembered up there with those Hammer horror films centered on vampires, resurrected corpses, and lycanthropes. Shot in shadowy black and white, the story follows struggling seventeen year old Janet (Jennie Linden), who is currently away from home living at a finishing school for girls.
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Grave Steps are Taken
The Strange Love of Martha IversNovember 26, 2017Uniting a superlative film noir cast, 1946's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, directed by Lewis Milestone (a two time Academy Award winner, one of which he earned for All Quiet on the Western Front), begins with a triumvirate of childhood friends witnessing a crime which forges a unique bond between them, it informing their respective directions into adulthood. Building off of her performance in Double Indemnity two years earlier, Barbara Stanwyck, playing the title character, once again proves why she is one of the all-time great femme fatales. . . a calm, controlled, ruthless Machiavellian puppet master, she not only pulls the strings of her weak and feeble alcoholic husband Walter O’Neil (Kirk Douglas in his first film role – and against type from what we would later know) – who truly loves her, but she also has a manipulative control over the entire city in which she lives – owner of the plant that gives its people their jobs, the police that protect it (thanks to her husband, who is the district attorney), and everything else in between.
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Star Pick with Tia Carrere
No Replicant RequiredBlade RunnerOctober 3, 2017The last few years have been a dream for fans of films and television series of the 1980s and 90s, as it seems like more and more are getting sequels (often after many long years), usually with at least a portion of the original cast (and often the director back in either the same role or that of producer) returning to play a part left behind long ago. Think, in no particular order, Dumb and Dumber, Full House, Mad Max, Rocky (Creed), Star Wars, Wet Hot American Summer (actually early 2000s), Jurassic Park, and, as of this Friday, add Blade Runner to the list. Returning to the silver screen thirty-five years after the original, Ridley Scott this time puts his executive producer cap on, with Denis Villeneuve taking over directorial efforts, while Harrison Ford delves into the Rick Deckard character once again. . . though, you’ll have to wait to hear more on that. As a lead-in to the long awaited sequel, the original 1982 picture is the focus today.
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Star Pick with Michael Dante
Gone with the Winds of ChangeGone with the WindSeptember 28, 2017It was lovely sitting down with veteran actor Michael Dante at Trekonderoga this past August. In the business for more than sixty years, it was not his original path in life. A top baseball player, he was signed by the Boston Braves out of high school. As fate would have it, he travelled a less expected path, finding his way, through interesting circumstances, into his first feature film, Robert Wise’s Somebody Up There Likes Me, in 1956 (with legendary names like Newman, Duvall and McQueen). Leading to an impressive career, Dante has graced the silver screen in such films as Westbound, Seven Thieves (Edward G. Robinson, Rod Steiger, Joan Collins, Eli Wallach), Kid Galahad (Elvis), The Naked Kiss (with famed director Samuel Fuller), Apache Rifles, Willard, as well as playing the title character in Winterhawk. . . this is just a small sampling of his work.
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Point of No Return
The Breaking PointAugust 11, 2017An atmospheric noir that takes place on both land and sea, Michael Curtiz’s 1950 crime drama The Breaking Point, the second adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not” (the original, the 1944 version, utilized the novel’s title and paired Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall for the first time), is a gripping tale that never lets you go. A touch less cynical but just as fateful as your prototypical film noir, the narrative follows former marine Harry Morgan (John Garfield), a genuine yet gruff fishing boat captain who has never caught the break he has so hoped for. Working with his loyal-to-a-fault African American first mate, Wesley Park (Juano Hernandez), the pair have been together for twelve years, always just making ends meet.
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Jungle Love
The Lost City of ZJuly 18, 2017Following in the vein of other epic adventure tales of the past, like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Lawrence of Arabia, ‘Aguirre, the Wrath of God’ and Apocalypse Now, writer/director James Gray’s adaptation of David Grann’s The Lost City of Z is a dangerously grand journey into the mysterious jungles of the Amazon. The 2017 feature is based on real life British explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) – an Indiana Jones type, who, at the start of the narrative, is a military man with low standing due to his father’s previous actions (despite the fact Percy never met him). Looked down upon by the wealthy upperclassmen of the military, he is sent to the Royal Geography Society, where they try to persuade him to survey the border lines between Bolivia and Brazil (as the ever more desirable rubber plantations are leading towards war – the two governments have accepted the British institutions offer to do the job). Though wary, the Society members hint that this could be the perfect way to restore his good name, and Percy decides to take the position.
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A Unique Take on the Traditional Western
McCabe & Mrs. MillerJuly 9, 2017We often think of the western as being set in the sunbaked, sand-filled deserts of the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood epics. Turning this idea on its head, Robert Altman takes us into the frontier lands of the wet and snowy northwest (filmed in and around Vancouver, Canada), an equally picturesque yet no less hostile terrain, in the 1971 film McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Riding into town with his bushy beard and no less hairy fur coat, John McCabe (Warren Beatty) is a businessman looking for his next big opportunity. He sees the tiny, half-built town of Presbyterian Church (just over one hundred people) not as a hindrance, but as the perfect location to set up a one stop saloon, gambling den and whorehouse. Hiring some local men, they get to work while he heads off to procure the working girls – purchasing some lower class ladies for the gruff, rough, and equally low class frontier men of the area.
