By focusing on “love” rather than “sex”, Hays Code-era musical comedy The Second Greatest Sex was trying to communicate a deeper meaning about how the emotions and thoughts of women ought not to be controlled.
Thomas Savage’s novel and Jane Campion’s film adaptation of The Power of the Dog depict the danger in Americans’ distrust of civic institutions.
Alfred Werker’s fantasy-dabbling Repeat Performance and John Sturges not-your-typical western The Capture may – or may not – be actual film noir.
Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog undermines “toxic masculinity” – a term that evokes the existence of alternative masculinities.
We're treated to many eye-catching examples of John Ford's talents in Universal's 4K restoration of silent westerns Straight Shooting and Hell Bent, now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.
George Marshall's western spoof, Destry Rides Again, has a serious central premise; can society function without the threat of violence?
Stony Plain Records rounds up lost tapes from Canadian country/folk legends Ian and Sylvia Tyson performing as Great Speckled Bird in 1969. It was a very good discovery, indeed.
The Wind (2018) is a quietly impressive film, an example of genre cinema that shows thoughtfulness and an interest in ideas.
While Anthony Asquith’s Shooting Stars and Underground look excellent on Kino Lorber’s digital restoration, Arthur Robison’s The Informer looks most spectacular.
Samuel Fuller's Forty Guns serves as a remarkable film that fuses the Western with film noir and provides ample space, at least during its first half, for Barbara Stanwyck to provide a commanding performance that hints at what a Western female heroine might look like.
Not their first foray into bringing the short story form to cinema, the Coen Brothers' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs affirms, sadly, that in this regard, cinema is the lesser storytelling form.
The inability to communicate truthfully and accurately runs like a red thread through the course of Robert M. Young's western, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez.
