Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

No producer or director of the 40s and 50s set out to make a film noir. They were simply trying to put together a film that would entertain and turn a profit, dammit! During the 40s and early 50s, TV…

The A-bomb had contributed to this soft reign of terror. It had also fired a period of excitement and fertility in the neglected field of science fiction. Before WWII, sci-fi in film was widespread, …

Last month, we waltzed through mid – 19th Century Italy. Today, we jump forward a half – century --- royalty continues its decline, the middle – class and powerful industrial leaders are ascendant in…

Visconti has been seen in this season as the director of the searing, accusatory film of the interdependence of the industrial class with the Nazis in Germany, The Damned. But where did this European…

As with Django, Corbucci wrote the film with his brother Bruno, as well as Vittoriano Petrilli and Mario Amendola. He’d been deeply influenced by the recent assassinations of Che Guevara, Cuban revol…

There’s a small set of seasons that lurk after the best of winter, but before spring is in the air. You’re emerging from the wonders of a White Christmas (TM) --- those beautiful, light, star-filled …

Last season we walked through an admittedly unscientific list of the greatest character actors in recent memory --- all men and mostly known for roles as so-called bad men. But we made the promise to…

Well, Noirvember may be over, but our journey into my made-up sub-genre, atomic noir, is not. It’s a cheery continuation for the holiday season. At least the next film has some humor in it, as oppose…

It would still prove to be the American Century, but now it was overshadowed by the threat of the atom’s power. Air raid shelters were built in public buildings. Families dug and poured concrete in t…

Nosferatu 1922’s reputation grew down the years, especially among film lovers. One of these was German master director Werner Herzog. As the 70s ended, Herzog determined that he wanted to remake the …

For Scary Season 2024, we’re harkening back to a founding film in the genre of horror. In this era of the 21st Century, fans of horror are rich in the types of film they view to give themselves the c…

Doesn’t seem like much of a bargain. An uber-being shows and coincidentally knows what you want --- merely sign away your post-existence --- usually in blood, that might be a clue! But repeatedly, pe…

The middle and lower classes, so-called, ultimately flocked to the message of fascism, not just in Germany but even earlier, in Italy in the ‘20s under Mussolini. For a class of people who had little…

It’s the end of season one, or cycle one, or Earth one, whatever you want to call it, for the pod… We wanted to end the season on something special and this film is just so --- a veritable treasure c…

You may have seen Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, and if so, you know the moment in the film when Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton sees himself in a role on TV and points at the screen excitedly --- i…

My top noirs are Double Indemnity and Out Of The Past, in that order, but Falcon is special. Right out of the hard-boiled school of writing, the character of the unstoppable but human private detecti…

We’ve gone through quite a few pods on film, especially film noir and police procedurals, but this might be the first that has a female protagonist as the main character! More’s the pity! But what a …

When film fans speak about directors, they often go on about idiosyncratic styles or bellwether looks and techniques. You can rapidly identify a Hitchcock film. Same for something from Orson Welles. …

Film is such a wonderful art form --- in some instances, almost the entirety of the world may be encompassed. Or the artist makes the attempt to capture the world. And thereby capture timeless subjec…

Many of us strive to accomplish great things in our lives. A smaller group reach the heights in terms of those dream accomplishments. Then what do you do? How do you follow that when you’ve climbed a…