Among Ernst Lubitsch’s most charming movies is the comedy-drama The Shop Around the Corner (1940). Its story of a man and a woman who fall in love through corre-spondence but actively dislike each other in person (they are unaware of […]
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The Jackal (1997) ☆ ☆ ☆
Twenty-four years after The Day of the Jackal was released, Universal got its corporate wish and remade the story with howitzers of star power as The Jackal (1997). Thankfully, because the new film is based on the original’s screenplay, it’s […]
Continue reading »The Day of the Jackal (1973) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
One of the most suspenseful thrillers of the 1970s is this gem, a British-French co-production directed by Fred Zinnemann. The Day of the Jackal (1973) is an exciting adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s best-seller concerning an conspiracy plot to kill French […]
Continue reading »Manpower (1941) ☆ ☆ ☆
Four years after Slim, Warner Bros. remade the story, with some notable differences. The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther quite eruditely explained the studio’s process in this way: The Warner Brothers…know the pat way to forge a thunderbolt. […]
Continue reading »Slim (1937) ☆ ☆ ☆
A romantic triangle forms against the backdrop of high-tension power lines in Slim (1937). Young farmer Henry Fonda watches linemen erect a steel tower, climb it and string electrical lines. He’s enthralled, and is soon hired as an apprentice to […]
Continue reading »Meet Psychdoc77
Psychdoc77 is a cinephile in Chicago, IL. His interest in film dates to childhood and a long-closed video store named Video Vault which, in 1987, seemed to have every movie ever made. In particular, it had all the James Bond […]
Continue reading »Jigoku (1960) ☆ ☆ ☆
Jigoku (translated from Japanese as “hell”) is a tale of two college students who accidently run down a gangster with their car. They don’t report the killing and things start to spiral out of control for them, especially Shiro, the […]
Continue reading »The Artist (2011) ☆ ☆ ☆
In 1927, a silent film star (Jean Dujardin, looking like a French James Bond) helps a young ingénue (Berenice Bejo) get her break into films. As sound comes in and his star fades, she explodes into a top star. She […]
Continue reading »Prozac Nation (2001) ☆ ☆
Prozac Nation, based on Elizabeth Wurtzel’s bestselling memoir of depression during college, details a Harvard student’s experience of depression. Christina Ricci stars as Wurtzel, a writer who almost immediately becomes known for her music journalism when she starts college. She […]
Continue reading »War Horse (2011) ☆ ☆
Steven Spielberg’s first World War I film, War Horse, concerns a horse that a boy obtains in England during the lead-up to the war. The boy and the horse become close and the horse nearly saves the family, but when […]
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