Uncomfortable to watch more than fifty years after its theatrical release, Days of Wine and Roses remains a powerful portrait of a co-dependent couple and their painful slide into alcoholism. PR man Joe Clay’s (Jack Lemmon, Some Like It Hot) high pressure, unsatisfying job requires him to wine and dine clients. He meets a young woman named Kirsten (Lee Remick, A Face in the Crowd)
Highly respected for a trifecta of films from the late 1940’s–Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), and The Third Man (1949)–few truly questioned Carol Reed’s talent. However, by 1962, following a decade of up and downs, and perhaps most shockingly, having been fired from Mutiny on the Bounty the year before, Reed’s confidence was shaken. Unhealthy, overweight, he undertook a cat-and-mouse thriller The
Greeted by mixed reviews and disappointing box office returns, 1957’s A Face in the Crowd has since earned classic status in the minds of many film scholars. In 2008, A Face in the Crowd was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. Scripted by Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront) and
A 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles police department, Bumper Morgan (William Holden, Sabrina) is just days away from retirement. Years patrolling the streets have left him more than a little jaded, not just by the criminals he’s sworn to protect us from, but the actions of his own, younger colleagues. As the film begins, he is called out to a case involving a murdered
Following the success of Tony Rome, Frank Sinatra returned to the role of hard boiled investigator with The Detective. Based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Roderick Thorp, The Detective is far more serious and adult in tone than Tony Rome, but touched on some surprising themes for the era and saw Frank Sinatra deliver one of the best acting performances of
Sometimes a Great Notion—the second of five films directed by Paul Newman in his career and based on a novel by Ken Kesey—is both impressive and exasperating. It’s Impressive, because cinematographer Richard Moore (The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, Annie) so adeptly captures the beauty and rawness of the logging industry. In one scene, a very tall tree falls toward a camera shooting