Tag: film
Sturm und dreck: In defence of Hollywood
Whilst watching Ghostbusters (1984) on Esquire TV the other night, I came to a peculiar conclusion. Hollywood ain’t so bad. There’s recently been a lot of talk about this American movie-churner-outer and the quality of its productions. That somehow, the world of foreign films is a more satisfying land. That Hollywood has had its share…
Revisiting a classic: The Grand Hotel
Grand Hotel (1932) isn’t a perfect, or even great movie, but it is an interesting one. By most accounts, Grand Hotel was the first movie to have multiple headlining stars, rather than just one or two. Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore and Wallace Beery all shared the headlines for this film. Directed…
Unnoticed Injustice: Dirty Harry and the RoboCop reboot
What a difference 43 years makes. That is the time between the on-screen birth of Harry Callahan, Clint Eastwood’s iconic protagonist in Don Siegel’s brilliantly controversial Dirty Harry (1971), and the screen rebirth of Alex Murphy, freshly minted drone-with-a-heart-of-gold in Jose Padilha’s RoboCop reboot. Harry, for those who don’t remember, was the American conservative middle…
A Horror Renaissance: 2013’s greatest nightmares
While much of the world buzzes on about the Oscars, gore-hounds like myself must deal with the despairing knowledge that our genre of preference will continue to go neglected. A true shame, too, for 2013 was a stalwart year for horror, both in the independent circuit and for the oft-neglected studio pictures. With The Conjuring’s…
Employee’s Entrance: Pre-Code Hollywood and the American Dream
Pre-Code Hollywood – roughly 1929-1934 – has become a popular subject in recent years. The movies made during these years, before meaningful enforcement of the Production Code, featured all manner of salacious material. You can buy collections of them on DVD and see what all the fuss was about. When we talk about them today,…