The devil comes in many guises. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), the devil arrives by train on the small suburban town of Santa Rosa, California in the form of Joseph Cotton (The Third Man). Cotton portrays Uncle…
Out of the Past: “Klute” (1971)
Someone is watching you—you don’t know where the stalker is hidden, but eyes are watching your every movement. Klute delves into your primal fears. It taps into the fear that someone is watching you when the lights are out and…
Out of the Past: “Drive” (2011)
He has no name. If you hire him, he will give you five minutes of his talent. What is his talent, you ask? He drives and he drives well. If you rob a bank or a pawn shop, he will…
Out of the Past: “The Killing” (1956)
Before Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange there was The Killing. Stanley Kubrick’s second foray into film noir instantly became a classic and ultimately, Kubrick’s springboard into Hollywood. The story is simple–a group of small-time criminals,…
Out of the Past: “The Third Man” (1949)
The Vienna depicted in Carol Reed’s The Third Man no longer exists. It is a maze of sewers, back alleys, political gamesmanship, and lies. Nothing remains except for abandoned bourgeois flats, decrepit buildings and an amusement park devoid of any…
Out of the Past: “The Blue Dahlia” (1946)
After making his name in elevating pulp novels to a higher art form with his series of detective novels starring Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler heard Hollywood calling. After a number of films based on his work, Chandler was given the…
Move Review: “Paddington”
January is filled with snow, harsh winds, and cloudy skies, and cinemas are filled with Hollywood’s winter garbage and Oscar-nominated films grasping for audiences’ attentions before they are forgotten. It’s a mishmash of Hollywood’s most memorable and Hollywood’s most forgettable.…
