When it came to attracting the eye of some of the biggest silent screen legends, Vilma Bánky had no peer. After acting in a few films in her native Hungary, producer Samuel Goldwyn spied her in 1925 and persuaded her to come to Hollywood. She agreed, and became an immediate …
In 1931, producer Samuel Goldwyn was in a real bind. His film The Unholy Garden had been a complete disaster from start to finish, enraging Ronald Colman, Goldwyn Pictures’ star actor, who never quite got over having been contractually forced to appear in the film. A horrifying production, terrible reviews …
Are You Here ★★☆☆☆ Director: Matthew Weiner Millennium Entertainment 113 Minutes In Theaters August 22, 2014 (Limited) and on DVD September 30, 2014 – Quirky comedy Are You Here (2013) is a tale of the most bourgeois of bromances, two pals in a bizarre, yet strangely dull, codependent relationship. This …
Valerie (Geena Davis) is a gorgeous beautician living in the San Fernando Valley with her doctor fiance Ted (Charles Rocket). For reasons never explained — his girlfriend is Geena Davis, for cryin’ out loud — Ted likes to boff other women, thus neglects Valerie in the bedroom and can’t get …
The Congress ★★★☆☆ Director: Ari Folman Drafthouse Films (Official Site) 122 Minutes Now Available on iTunes and On Demand | In Theaters August 29, 2014 – “Lousy choices,” Al tells his client. “That’s your whole story.” Al (Harvey Keitel) is agent and frustrated father figure to Robin Wright (playing a …
By the time Kay Francis began filming Another Dawn in the fall of 1936, she was exhausted. She was the most popular, profitable actress at Warner Bros., and the studio took full advantage, putting her in one film after another without break in between. Another Dawn had originally been intended …
A Measure of the Sin ★★★★☆ Dir: Jeff Wedding Brink Vision (Official Site) 76 minutes – A childhood spent in the safety of a mother’s care becomes a nightmare straight out of the Old Testament in Jeff Wedding’s A Measure of the Sin. This chilling underground horror film follows the …
Fort Apache was the first film of what would become known as director John Ford’s “Cavalry Trilogy.” Though Ford worked within the same historical period in other films, too, these three movies — Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950) — were loosely tied together thanks not only their shared historical setting, but because they were released consecutively and featured period-appropriate music used as strong thematic elements, the role of Irish immigrants in the United States’ brutal expansion through Native lands, and a subversive, critical approach to the policies of the United States government.
The Battered Bastards of Baseball ★★★½ / ★★★★★ Directors: Chapman Russell Way, Maclain Way A Netflix Production 79 Minutes Premieres on Netflix Friday, July 11, 2014 – The Portland Mavericks were the most popular minor league baseball team in the country through much of the 1970s. They were the WKRP …
Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger (2014) ★★★★☆ Dir: Joe Berlinger Magnolia Pictures (Official Site) 120 minutes U.S. Theatrical Release: June 27, 2014 (Limited) – Just before Christmas in 1994, James “Whitey” Bulger, a big player in the so-called Irish Mafia in South Boston, was tipped off …
