Sunset Boulevard
(dir. Billy Wilder) (1950) Creepiest of black comedies as wisecracking opportunist from Ohio (William Holden) encounters Old Hollywood (Norma Desmond, aka Gloria Swanson) with her major-domo, Erich von Stroheim, with fatal results. This Paramount classic with a sensational script is still the very best film ever made about Hollywood. After this classic, the pictures got smaller. From Schwabs to the golf course at Bel Air, to Norma Desmond’s crumbling palazzo, this faded Sunset grandeur is vindication alone for olden golden Hollywood…
Continue Reading →The Insider
(dir. Michael Mann) (1999) Cancer man and chemist Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) is shown the door but his erstwhile Big Tobacco employer strikes again when he breaches the confidentiality agreement. 60 Minutes producer and crypto-saint Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) is busy inducing that in aid of the effort to expose what everyone already knows: smoking is bad for you. Compelling and clever; rich performances, particularly by Crowe and Christopher Plummer as the 60 Minutes host, Mike Wallace (both characters the most compelling throughout by far, because they face genuine, human, crises of conscience).
Continue Reading →It’s A Wonderful Life
(dir. Frank Capra) (1946) Utopian dreamer George Bailey (James Stewart) receives a Dickensian gift as he prepares to jump off a bridge; a glimpse at local conditions if he’d never been born. Full of sentiment but not sentimental, TVC challenges you not to be reaching for your hankie by the conclusion.
Continue Reading →Islamic Arts
(by J Bloom & S Blair) Despite ongoing conventions, Islamic Art (an extremely wide term, used here for convenience and coherence) flourished beyond the merely decorative or doctrinal. This sumptuous Phaidon edition is a good entrée to the flowers of the various Muslim empires in history.
Continue Reading →A Savage War of Peace
(by Alistair Horne) Terrific, informative, thrilling account of the French being kicked off the Barbary Coast. I don’t know if Algiers is better off, but at least they own it.
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