Inside Daisy Clover has urgent news to impart: Hollywood is full of phoneys. Beneath its sparkling veneer, Tinseltown is a snake pit filled with sycophants and fiends who pay millions for your smile, while also stealing your soul. This revelation isn’t particularly shocking, or much of a revelation, but the film repeats it endlessly and […]
Lonely Town: ‘The Crowd’ (1928)
Here’s the second instalment in my ‘New York State of Mind’ series. The Crowd is about a man who moves to a big city and waits for his life to get started, without realising that his life has become waiting. So desperate is he to stand out from the crowd, he never considers there might […]
A Piece of the Action: ‘Quick Millions’ (1931)
Quick Millions moves like a getaway car—at speed. Within the first two minutes we meet a lowly truck driver who dreams of becoming a big shot. Within five, he’s committed a crime. Within 10, he’s laying out plans for a protection racket, the first of many schemes which pave his way to the top. Like […]
A Thing About Machines: ‘Westworld’ (1973)
What happens when man’s reach exceeds not just his grasp, but also his common sense? That’s the premise of Michael Crichton’s Westworld, in which visitors go to an amusement park for the experience of a lifetime—and get it. Welcome to Delos, the resort which promises its guests “the vacation of the future, today”. For a […]
All That Money Can Buy: ‘The V.I.P.s’ (1963)
Ensconced in the lobby of Grand Hotel, Dr. Otternschlag famously observes: “People coming, going. Nothing ever happens.” The joke is of course that he’s wrong. The V.I.P.s is filled with people coming and going, specifically a group of passengers at a London airport en route to the US. We witness one tumultuous day in their […]
In Memoriam: Stanley Donen (1924-2019)
About two weeks ago, I found myself thinking of Stanley Donen. In the latest debacle surrounding this year’s Oscar ceremony, the Academy had just announced it would be dropping the presentation of four awards, including Best Editing and Best Cinematography, from the telecast—a decision so manifestly absurd and greeted with such derision that it was […]
Grand Tapestry: ‘War and Peace’ (1966-67)
Yesterday I spent eight and a half hours swept up in the great current that is Sergei Bondarchuk’s adaptation of War and Peace—now playing in a dazzling new restoration at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. A patriotic Soviet response to King Vidor’s 1956 version—which starred Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn and had been a […]
Love on the Lower East Side: ‘Crossing Delancey’ (1988)
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, here’s the first instalment in my ‘New York State of Mind’ series. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jewish grandmother in possession of an eligible granddaughter and an enterprising disposition must be in want of a grandson-in-law. Such is the tale of Crossing Delancey, Joan Micklin Silver’s […]
A New York State of Mind: New York City on Film
“I love this town!” -Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) in ‘Ghostbusters’, speaking for New Yorkers everywhere. The Big Apple. The City That Never Sleeps. The Melting Pot. New Amsterdam. Gotham. New York has almost as many nicknames as it has neighbourhoods. A film hub long before Hollywood, the city is a vital part of American cinema, […]
Street Fighter: ‘The Way of the Dragon’ (1972)
In The Way of the Dragon, Bruce Lee fights in an alley behind a restaurant, in the restaurant itself, on a rooftop, in a park and at a World Heritage Site. The film exists so that we might have the pleasure of watching its hero dispatch thugs in increasingly imaginative ways. When the hero is […]
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