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It has been a decade since I last watched Charles Vidor's GILDA (1946). It is generally remembered as the peak of Rita Hayworth's career, especially due to her sultry "Put the Blame on Mame" number. There is a lot of kinky stuff going just under the surface which could not be directly depicted at this time of heavy censorship and the viewer’s imagination is given free rein to fill in the gaps. Th...

I am reading Scott Eyman’s excellent biography of John Ford. I decided to watch Ford’s 1940 film of Steinbeck’s GRAPES OF WRATH. As usual with directors who started their career in the silent era a lot of storytelling is done visually. Few scenes are as moving as the one where Ma Joad (Jane Darwell) burns old letters and cards and looks in the mirror with a pair of ear bobs as she prepares to b...

Claude LeLouche’s 1966 A MAN AND A WOMAN is a simple story about a widow (Anouk Aimée) and a widower (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who fall in love. While the plot and characters are not in and of themselves that profound the two charming and extremely photogenic leads shot in gorgeous settings is more than enough. There is a lot of music and songs including a fine samba sung by Pierre Barouh. Fran...

In Steven Soderbergh’s THE CHRISTOPHERS the children of a once famous artist hire a forger to complete some unfinished, long ago abandoned canvases so they'll have an inheritance when he dies. Michaela Coel plays the forger and Ian McKellen the artist and the film is basically a dialog between the two. Both give marvelous performances. Set mostly in the artist’s rambling messy house this environ...

Honestly I am not sure what to make of Kristoffer Borgli’s THE DRAMA which I think may well be the intent. The film begins in a light mode following rom-com cliches including a cute meet. A couple (Zendaya and Robert Pattinson) only a few days short of their wedding have their lives and plans knocked wildly eschew when the bride reveals a very terrible secret from her past. From this point on I...