I’ve writtena bout a bunch of these noir sets from Kino Lorber. I love them because they bring us some underseen and rarely heard-of low-budget film noirs. The three in this set are all from Poverty Row studio Republic Pictures. Two of them are quite good, and the other has Raymond Burr. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.
The Double is an Italian movie that begins with a man getting shot in a parking lot. The rest of the film consists of flashbacks from the dying man’s life, trying to piece together how he got there. That’s an interesting idea. This is not a great movie. You can read all my thoughts over at Cinema Sentries.
It is hot here in Oklahoma. Too darn hot. It has been over 100 degrees every day for the past week or two. That completely zaps all my energy. Today it didn’t help that I did a bunch of cleanup at a house we are building. Which meant blowing out a bunch of cabinets that filled the house with dust. Covered my face with dust and filled my lungs is more like it.
I am knackered. I’ve been staring at this screen for ten minutes, trying to think of something clever to say about MacArthur. I got nothing. But I didn’t write the review today; I wrote it yesterday (or was it the day before.) Whenever it was, I was pretty tired then, too. I’m always tired, it seems.
It’s just too darn hot.
Anyway, you can read my review over at Cinema Sentries (spoiler: I didn’t like the film very much.)
The Island is so close to being a good movie. Or at least an interesting one. Michael Caine stars as a reporter investigating some disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle, only to be captured by a gang of pirates. It is as silly as that sounds, but not quite as silly as it should have been. Or fun. There are several things they could have done to push it into “good” territory, but they never quite get there. It is worth a watch if you are bored, but there are plenty of other Michael Caine films that are more worth your time. You can read my full review over at Cinema Sentries.
Radiance Films has become one of my favorite Boutique Blu-ray companies. They typically put out films that I’ve never heard of, but when I watch them, I discover that they are actually quite good.
Usually. Of late, I’ve found their movies to be a bit disappointing. The Boxer is a Japanese take on Rocky, but more dour and a whole lot less fun. It isn’t bad, and definitely not as bad as the reviews on Letterboxd would have you believe, but it isn’t good either. I don’t know if that makes you want to read my review of it, but if it does, you can find it over at Cinema Sentries.
This heist film from director Kelly Reichardt is a delight. Josh O’Connor stars as a bored middle-class white dude who decides to become an art thief. He’s not good at it. He’s not good at anything really. Which makes the film a lot of fun. It is a very low-key affair, but I liked it a lot. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.
Clark Gable and Joan Crawford starred in eight films together. This was their final film. It is a weird one. Part prison break story, part adventure, part mystical religious drama, and part romance. It’s actually pretty good, but one wonders what exactly they were aiming for. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.
I’ve become a big fan of 1970s Italian crime thrillers. Italy was going through what they now call the Years of Lead back then, which was a period of high crime and political turmoil. Their films often reflect that in the best possible way. This film pushes the politics more than the crime or the thrills, which makes it just a little bit dull. But there is still some good stuff, as you can tell from my review.
Come Live With Me is a sweet little romantic comedy from 1941. It stars Hedy Lamarr as an Austrian woman who has fled the Nazis and is currently living in New York. When she is threatened with deportation unless she marries an American, she makes a deal with a down-on-his-luck writer. If he marries her, she’ll give him enough money to live on. But she doesn’t want anything more from him because she’s in love with another man (who is already married to a different woman, hence the reason he can’t marry her). Lamarr and Stewart are terrific, and the whole thing is very good light entertainment. You can read my full review here.
I’ve been reading a lot more comics lately. I’ve been reading a lot more books lately. At the beginning of the year, I decided to dedicate some time just before bed to reading, and it has been working. I generally try to read a couple of chapters of a regular book and then maybe a section of a comic book. I’ve been enjoying that, and as such I’ve started requesting some comics from Fantagraphics.
They don’t do a lot of superhero stuff or the type of book you’d find at a mainstream seller. They have a lot of weird, indie comics. Which is fun to read. It gets me out of my comfort zone.
Heaven is a slender little book about a teenage girl who discovers a strange strip club outside of town. She gets a job there and finds it liberating, until she discovers something else about it. It is a slight book, but a fun one. You can read my review here.
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