All posts tagged review

The Loved One (1965), a biting satire on American commercialism and the business of death, was billed on its release as “The Motion Picture with Something to Offend Everyone!”, and even today, this still holds true. Based on the 1948 Evelyn Waugh novel, it was written after his “humiliating success,” as he referred to it,…

Gummo (1997) is a difficult film that too often feels outrageous for the sake of outrageousness, though fans of the film seem to love it for just that reason. Personally, I’ve never been able to fully accept artistic expression that exploits people in order to show that sometimes our society exploits people. It’s impossible for…

History is messy. The winds of cultural change seldom align neatly with our calendars; the things we think of as quintessentially 1950s, for example, like teenyboppers and nuclear testing and television, properly date to the 1940s. The same holds true for the 1970s, a decade which began in the midst of a sort of cultural…

Dan Brooks (Bing Crosby) is a disenchanted junior executive, the kind of guy expected to marry the boss’ eldest daughter and lead a staid, white collar life. But his true passion is racing, so he runs off with his horse Broadway Bill and his good friend, horse trainer Whitey (Clarence Muse), with plans to enter…