(There are a lot of spoilers here, more than I usually include.)
Late in Lewis Gilbert’s The Good Die Young, Miles “Rave” Ravenscourt, expertly played by Laurence Harvey, opines that the men of the film’s title perish in war while the surviving soldiers are, in my words, sort of like sediment shifting to the bottom of [...]

 
“This boy…and this girl…were never properly introduced to the world we live in…”

Two weeks ago, the director Nicholas Ray had a very good couple of days on DVD. July 30 saw one of his finest films, Bigger Than Life, released in the UK by the BFI, a superb edition highlighted by Ed Buscombe’s commentary [...]

Four viewings of movies designated as film noir in a 24-hour period and the only side effects I seem to have are the almost uncontrollable desires to rob a bank and get mixed up with a woman who’s no good for me. It’ll pass, I’m sure. The new Warner Bros. Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. [...]

In the Criterion Collection’s monthly newsletter, they ask a prominent figure associated with a previously released title to compose a list of ten favorite selections among the Criterion catalog. Even though it was just released this past week, I know for certain that I would choose their Ace in the Hole DVD if that question [...]

I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.

I can’t even pretend to feign objectivity when discussing Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place. I think it’s one of the most exquisite, fascinating films to ever come from Hollywood. [...]

With the official announcement of the Warner Bros. Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 4, enthusiasts can rejoice at the prospect of twice as many films as in the other three volumes, at the same price, and all with commentaries and featurettes. There are some real gems in there too, highlighted by Nicholas Ray’s debut [...]

Of all the director-actor-actress triumvirates that made at least two non-sequel pictures together, my personal favorite might be Fritz Lang’s two films with Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame - The Big Heat and Human Desire, released in 1953 and 1954, respectively. Lang had pulled a similar trick before, teaming Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett [...]

Scarlet Street, like other movie titles derived from names of roads both fictional and real, such as Sunset Blvd. and Mulholland Dr., is not the type of area most people would want to call home. In Fritz Lang’s film, sympathy and goodness are lurking elsewhere, leaving us instead with characters like Edward G. Robinson’s [...]

There are prescient movies, ahead of their time enough for modern viewers to appreciate a retained relevance or uncanny vision into how society would reflect portions of films past, and then there’s Ace in the Hole. What amazes me most about Billy Wilder’s 1951 master work isn’t just how eerily accurate he captured the [...]

Humans are so easily seduced by beauty that we often associate it with positive qualities such as virtue, innocence and goodness. Regardless of how much we know about beautiful things, we want to think the best of them and often demonstrate an unearned sense of trust as though they’re somehow above normal fallibility. [...]