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Riffraff

“Not only had Jean Harlow learned to act by 1936’s Riffraff, but her hair wasn’t the aggressive platinum blonde of her ribald days. She was at the height of her beauty here, and in the middle of another change of screen persona. The softening of Harlow’s bad girl act was one of trying to find a” read more

Reckless

“What a curio 1935’s Reckless is. Not just for the backstage dynamics involved in its making but the morbid bits of autobiography and uneasy tonal switches between screwball musical comedy and torrid melodrama. With the Pre-Code years behind them, MGM sought to turn Jean Harlow’s rounded figure i” read more

Uptown Saturday Night

“Sidney Poitier’s third film as a director, Uptown Saturday Night, is a delightful, rowdy minor work. His work as a director is still a bit too stuffy and heavy-handed for what is essentially a situation comedy blown to feature-length, but it’s still enjoyable. He counterbalances this stiff direc” read more

A Warm December

“Much like 1965’s A Patch of Blue, 1973’s A Warm December finds Sidney Poitier as healing presence for a woman. The major difference is that A Warm December plays like a combination of Roman Holiday and Love Story, but with an all-black cast. Poitier is a widower who travels to London and meets C” read more

Buck and the Preacher

“Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut is a western that continually threatens to be more interesting than it is. The story concerns Buck (Poitier) leading a wagon train of newly freed slaves westward, Preacher (Harry Belafonte), a greedy ex-con posing as a man of the word, and Deshay (Cameron Mitchel” read more

In the Heat of the Night

“The 1967 Academy Awards is widely considered one of the turning points and a viable symbol of the movie industry in full-blown identity crisis. Even the Wikipedia page for the event states: “The Best Picture nominees were an eclectic group of films reflecting the chaos of the era.” You had the w” read more

Duel at Diablo

“Based on a short story by Marvin H. Albert called “Apache Rising,” Duel at Diablo throws a lot of big ideas and big stars at the screen hoping something will stick. Not a lot does as it feels both overwhelmed and underthought. As beautiful as the backdrops are, as thrilling as the two major set ” read more

A Patch of Blue

“Sidney Poitier’s transformation from individual performer to all-encompassing symbol of an entire race as the lone black star of prominence is evident by the mid-60s. His thankless role of therapist to an alt-right Bobby Darin in Pressure Point was a red flag of this happening, as was his great wo” read more

Lilies of the Field

“A simple story that aims for emotional warmth and heart-tugging uplift, and succeeds, Lilies of the Field is a sweet little movie that charms. One of the Oscars earliest little movies that could, Sidney Poitier took points on the backend and director Ralph Nelson put his house up as collateral, this” read more

Pressure Point

“Stanley Kramer, Hollywood’s original good liberal, may not have directed (most of) this film, but his fingerprints are all over it. From the histrionic treatment of socially important material to the presence of movie stars in subbing in for ideological arguments, Pressure Point has all the hallma” read more

A Raisin in the Sun

“I must confess that this version of A Raisin in the Sun was the very first that I have watched, including stage shows and tv movies. I have known the basics of the plot – generational conflict, white flight, economic unease, striving for a better life for your family – but had never actually rea” read more

Paris Blues

“I think the four credited writers it took to adapt Harold Flender’s 1957 novel are the biggest tell that something is going to be ‘off’ with the final product. Sure enough, this one has got to be a lesser, if not the least, entry in the collaboration between director Martin Ritt and star Paul ” read more

The Defiant Ones

“James Baldwin famously derided this as white liberal wish fulfillment, and he wasn’t off the mark. Stanley Kramer’s cinema at its most essential elements is just that, well-intentioned if sanctimonious liberal guilt/fantasy. The Defiant Ones is another entry in that canon as it literalizes eleme” read more

Blackboard Jungle

“Nothing ages quite as quick as a mainstream Hollywood film about hot button social issues. Look no further than Blackboard Jungle, which reimagines an inner-city high school as a war zone of rapist students, gang violence, and a Molotov cocktail waiting to be thrown. Brute Force: Junior Edition, ess” read more

Cry, the Beloved Country

“Alan Paton adapted his own for the big screen and helped craft one of cinema’s first discussion about Apartheid in South Africa. Zoltan Korda creates a distinguished if heavily sentimental affair that has its heart in the right place. Movies about big, important social issues are often like this: ” read more

Atlantic City

“Louis Malle’s camera fills his tableaus with all sorts of eccentric details in this sweet, modest romance about two desperate people looking for a lifeline. We have Burt Lancaster bringing his history of tough guys to an aging gangster romancing Susan Sarandon’s waitress with a shady past in a c” read more

The Swimmer

“A box office failure in its heyday, 1968’s The Swimmer has since attained status as a cult film. Based on John Cheever’s short story of the same name, The Swimmer is an odd exploration of suburban malaise, the ennui of one man who has since been closed off from his privileged lifestyle, or a hal” read more

Birdman of Alcatraz

“The cinema is filled with collaborations between directors and their handsome proxies reuniting and exploring, if not refining, their individual and collective images. Behold the collaboration between director John Frankenheimer, one of cinema’s most sensitively masculine directors, and star Burt ” read more

Sorry, Wrong Number

“Anatole Litvak finally does something with his camera besides plop it down and film his actors as though they were performing on a stage. He pushes it into star Barbara Stanwyck’s face so we can count every drop of sweat that forms across her brow and upper lip while she lies in bed and franticall” read more

Brute Force

“Iron-jawed Burt Lancaster plays a tortured prisoner aching to get out to reunite with his ailing wife (Ann Blyth). We understand and sympathize with him, but not just with him but all the men in his cell block. When they riot against the despotic guard (Hume Cronyn), we understand their motivating f” read more

I Walk Alone

“Film noir is dependent upon a palpable sense of atmosphere, of a world going to rot, covered in grim and thick with smoke. There’s a sense of erotic energy and danger, often intertwined, and everyone seems morally pliable, if not bankrupt or seeking salvation. What separates the best from the mere” read more

The Rainmaker

“If you had a story set during the Great Depression in a sleepy, dusty little town suitable for the conning by a charlatan and the spinster daughter ripe for a sexual awakening by the same, who would you cast in those roles? Well, if we’re talking about the studio era of films, then the answers wou” read more