Pennies from Heaven (1981)

Pennies from Heaven (1981)

After his famous stint on Saturday Night Live and critically-acclaimed stand-up act, Steve Martin made his way into films in the late 1970s. Securing a solid (if completely bonkers) hit with The Jerk (1979), Hollywood seemed to feel Martin could only fill a very particular niche: the retro movie. Maybe it started with Sgt. Pepper’s…

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1929)

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1929)

Image courtesy Lolita’s Classics. – It’s often assumed that Norma Shearer’s good-girl image ended with the 1930 pre-Code flick The Divorcee, but that film, in truth, was the fourth in a row featuring the new, mature, slightly naughty Shearer. Beginning with The Trial of Mary Dugan and followed up immediately with The Last of Mrs.…

I Live My Life (1935)

I Live My Life (1935)

Spunky, beautiful heiress Kay Bentley (Joan Crawford) decides to go ashore when her father’s yacht docks in the Greek Islands. While there, she meets handsome Irish archaeologist Terry O’Neill (Brian Aherne) on an important dig, and after the standard debutante flirtation-via-irritation method doesn’t work, she decides to try again the next day. Discovering he has…

Roadblock (1951)

Roadblock (1951)

There’s probably no such thing as a nice, quiet little film noir, but Roadblock is as close as you can get. It’s likely that director Harold Daniels just stumbled into this low-key style that works so nicely within the genre — Daniels was known for very little except television and those terrible horror flicks that…

Glickman (2013)

Glickman (2013)

Described as the first jock turned broadcaster in history, Marty Glickman began what would become an exceptional sports career while attending high school in Brooklyn. The HBO documentary Glickman (2013), now out from Warner Archive, traces Marty’s path from his difficult childhood to becoming a New York City phenomenon known as the “Flatbush Flash,” for…