When you have more than one screen adaptation of a novel, usually one is more faithful to the book than the other. However, in the case of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, it has two pretty accurate translations. The first…
Read more →Humphrey Bogart
Three on a Match (1932): My Guilty Pleasure
Why do we love pre-Code films? Fast pace? Check. Great stories? Check. Great casts? Check again. Oh, come on. Let’s be honest. It’s the sex, depravity and lingerie! I consider all pre-Code films guilty pleasures. Each generation seems to think it is…
Read more →Second-Tier and Loving It: Hidden Films of Great Directors
Guest blogger Julie Sesnovich writes: They can’t all be winners. Even the strongest, smartest, most talented directors will misfire occasionally. It happens, and it’s forgivable. But what about the works that lie between masterpiece and failure? The films that, far…
Read more →Your Questions On The Burglar, Knock On Any Door And More
Q: What are the chances that The Burglar with Jayne Mansfield and Dan Duryea will be put on DVD? A: We’ve been an advocate of the film noir penned by David Goodis for a long time, especially since it was…
Read more →This Week In Film History, 10.16.11
October 17, 1916: Swimming star-turned-actress Annette Kellerman causes a sensation when she appears in the nude in Daughter of the Gods. October 18, 1931: “The Wizard of Menlo Park” and film pioneer Thomas Alva Edison passes away at the age…
Read more →In a Lonely Place (1950): Classic Film Review
Guest blogger Richard Finch writes: Film: In a Lonely Place Country: U.S. Director: Nicholas Ray ***1/2 It’s taken me more than one viewing to warm completely to In a Lonely Place. In the film Humphrey Bogart plays Dixon Steele, a…
Read more →The Maltese Falcon: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of
If you have never seen The Maltese Falcon, you have deprived yourself of something truly spectacular. You should fix that. Immediately. The granddaddy of film noir–the biggest and best of them all–this is one of those landmark films which ushered in…
Read more →Humphrey Bogart: The Non-Essentials
“I made more lousy pictures than any actor in history.” So said the man who would eventually be voted number one in an American Film Institute poll of the greatest screen actors of all time. It may have been…
Read more →Movie Poll: What’s Humphrey Bogart’s Best Role?
10 Things I Hate About Casablanca
Okay, please let me get in a few words first. Starting from the age of 12 or so–between afternoon and late late TV broadcasts, a few screenings in repertoire cinemas (Remember rep theaters? That’s where college students and urban intelligentsia would flock to watch King…
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