Favorite films

  • The Bad and the Beautiful
  • An American in Paris
  • Some Came Running
  • Tea and Sympathy

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  • Two Weeks in Another Town

    ★★★½

  • Bells Are Ringing

    ★★★★

  • Home from the Hill

    ★★★★½

  • Some Came Running

    ★★★★★

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  • Hellzapoppin'

    Hellzapoppin'

    ★★★★

    The necessity of narratives in cinema is a plot devised by Satan. 

    Or so you might come to believe, by the end of H.C. Potter’s “Hellzapoppin.” 

    An adaption of what was in its time the longest running Broadway musical ever, “Hellzapoppin” defies description; in a very literal sense of the phrase. The movie is about the process of translating the stage show to screen, and breaks every fourth wall (probably some fifth and sixth ones as well) through the course…

  • Dance, Girl, Dance

    Dance, Girl, Dance

    ★★★★

    At the intersection of art and commerce are two tough dames who would just as soon stab you in the face with a pointe shoe as dance in one. 

    “Dance, Girl, Dance” is a sharp piece of commentary on gender and performance hiding inside a resolutely b level musical comedy. It’s a clever manipulation of which the film itself is keenly aware; the plot, hanging its entire metaphor on the high-low art deception of a ballerina dancing in a burlesque…

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  • Two Weeks in Another Town

    Two Weeks in Another Town

    ★★★½

    The Hollywood of the 1950s goes to rehab, and emerges a mess holding itself together with the thin threads of sanity in Vincente Minnelli’s “Two Weeks in Another Town.” 

    The film is not quite a sequel to Minnelli’s 1952 noir masterpiece on motion pictures, “The Bad and the Beautiful.” It is, though, something of a reflection, or meditation, on the earlier work. This round, Kirk Douglas plays a down and out actor rather than a down and out producer; both…

  • Bells Are Ringing

    Bells Are Ringing

    ★★★★

    There is one bell that rings with a tone more clear and pure than all the others; maybe, in a higher tone too, and with the hint of a Brooklyn accent. 

    That bell is Judy Holliday, star of Vincente Minnelli’s musical comedy “Bells Are Ringing,” adapted from a Broadway production, also starring Holliday. The cousin film to George Cukor’s “It Should Happen to You,” “Bells” again features Holliday as a brilliant blonde ball of sunshine, who seems to twirl New…

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  • Luca

    Luca

    ★★★★½

    Disney, its time to come out of the closet. 

    I understand you are worried about how your family; Russia and China, will perceive you. It’s totally fair that you are concerned about them cutting you off. 

    But you have friends that will support you. 

    Friends, that, you have led along for years now. Most especially since “Frozen.” Friends who believe that you have intentions to live your truest self. 

    I have to say; someone in your position coming out would…

  • The Banshees of Inisherin

    The Banshees of Inisherin

    ★★★★★

    Is it better to be remembered or liked? It’s a question with little more practical utility for the majority of people than, say, trying to play a fiddle with four fingers. 

    The idea nonetheless becomes the preoccupation of one of the characters of Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin,” played by Brendan Gleeson. One day, after pondering the dilemma, he decides that he will abruptly cut off friendship with his best mate (Colin Farrell), and choose legacy over likability. 

    McDonagh,…