Remember the Night (1940)

There’s no question that Shine director Scott Hicks’s Snow Falling on Cedars is well-named. The weather — not only snow but fog and rain and looming clouds over the glorious landscapes of San Pedro Island in coastal Washington state — is undoubtedly the star of the show. Unfortunately, this is because the weather is mainly…

Faust — as he appears in Playing God and Devil’s Advocate — appears to be all the rage in Hollywood at the moment. Coincidently, a Norwegian version of the Faust tale in Jan Troell’s Hamsun is knocking around out there somewhere at the moment. You may even get to see it if you live in…

Hollywood has been insulting adult intelligence for years, but this movie is an insult even to teenage intelligence.

A funny but pointless movie that has already died the death at the box office. Why is that, I wonder?

Sling Blade by Billy Bob Thornton deserves credit for the acting job of its director and writer, who also plays the principal role, that of Karl Childers, a mentally retarded man in his 30s released from a state institution — the state seems to be Arkansas — after serving twenty years for murdering his mother…

Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil, made in1957 and now restored according to a memo of protest Welles wrote to Universal after they butchered the movie on release, may be the best B-picture ever made. Watching it today, you have to wonder if he knew what he was doing — which was anticipating the postmodern film…