Possessed (1947) was the third of Joan Crawford’s films for Warner Bros., the studio who snapped her up when her long-time home MGM, where she had been since the silent era, decided to cut her loose. Crawford was one of the few, if not only, actresses who managed to weather a host of problems that…
Stonehearst Asylum ★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Brad Anderson Millennium Entertainment (Official Site) 112 Minutes In Theaters Beginning October 24, 2014 (Limited) – In Edgar Allan Poe’s wry short story “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether,” a young doctor takes the opportunity to visit a renowned mental asylum and view for himself the successes…
Force Majeure ★★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Ruben Östlund Magnolia Pictures (Official Site | Facebook) 120 Minutes In Theaters Beginning October 24, 2014 (Limited) – Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) and their two adorable children (real-life siblings Vincent and Clara Wettergren) are spending a week at the gorgeous Les Arcs resort in the…
“In any case, this film isn’t a Western. It’s really about people who want nothing more than a home of their own. That was actually the great American dream at the time, and in all the statistical questionnaires that ask what Americans aim for, 90% always gave the answer: ‘Owning a home of my own.’…
Automata ★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Gabe Ibáñez Millennium Entertainment (Official Site) 110 Minutes In Theaters October 10, 2014 (Limited) – It’s the year 2044, and thanks to a series of devastating solar storms, the world’s population has been slashed to only 22 million, most of whom are confined to the sunbaked shell of a former…
The Two Faces of January ★★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Hossein Amini Magnolia Pictures (Official Site) 96 Minutes In Theaters September 26, 2014 (Limited) – Rydal (Oscar Isaac) is a young American ex-pat in Greece, a part-time tour guide and full-time grifter who finds himself intrigued by a couple vacationing on the island. Chester MacFarland (Viggo…
Former boxer turned police officer turned private eye, Spenser — no first names please, he’s got an air of mystery to maintain — has just lost a client, a former hooker who was shot by the henchmen of the gangster trying to bring her back into his fold. Hired the next day to find the…
Honeymoon ★★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Leigh Janiak Magnolia Pictures/Magnet Releasing (Official Site) 87 Minutes In Theaters September 12, 2014 (Limited) – “Amongst all the savage beasts, none is found so harmful as woman.” John Chrysostom, as quoted in The Bridal Bed (Joseph Braddock, 1961) Newlyweds Bea (Rose Leslie) and Paul (Harry Treadaway), suffering from…
This is my They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They 1000 Greatest Films update, the last of the dull end-of-summer update posts for SBBN. I haven’t seen nearly as many of the films on my TSPTD1K list (or the supplemental Scorsese and IMDb lists) as I’ve wanted for various reasons, mostly because I’ve been spending a lot…
A few notes about SBBN that I’ve been putting off until there’s enough for one big post that’s easier to skip: * Recently, the blog has had a couple of periods of downtime due to some glitches which no one at my webhost can identify. My theory is that the most recent WordPress updates aren’t…