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[struth]

Sullivan's Travels, 1941. Written and directed by Preston Sturges and stars Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake.



This is the Arrow Bluray.





The film's primary theme is best summed up in the last line of dialogue as spoken by Sullivan: "There's a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that's all some people have? It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan."

The scene in which the prisoners are taken to watch the 1934 Disney cartoon Playful Pluto takes place in a Southern black church; the film treats the African-American characters there with a level of respect unusual in films of the period. The Secretary of the NAACP, Walter White, wrote to Sturges:

I want to congratulate and thank you for the church sequence in Sullivan's Travels. This is one of the most moving scenes I have seen in a moving picture for a long time. But I am particularly grateful to you, as are a number of my friends, both white and colored, for the dignified and decent treatment of Negroes in this scene. I was in Hollywood recently and am to return there soon for conferences with production heads, writers, directors, and actors and actresses in an effort to induce broader and more decent picturization of the Negro instead of limiting him to menial or comic roles. The sequence in Sullivan's Travels is a step in that direction and I want you to know how grateful we are.

[struth]

The ever-young 'Some Like It Hot', 1959. Billy Wilder directs and it stars Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and features George Raft, Pat O'Brien and Joe E. Brown.


(Joe E Brown and Jack Lemmon... 'Nobody's Perfect')


One of the greatest of the greats imho....pure genius at times.

Some Like It Hot received widespread acclaim from critics, and is considered among the best films of all time. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 66 critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 9.1/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Some Like It Hot: A spry, quick-witted farce that never drags." According to Metacritic, another review aggregator which calculated a weighted average score of 98 out of 100 based on 19 critics, the film received "universal acclaim". Chicago Sun-Times's Roger Ebert wrote, "Wilder's 1959 comedy is one of the enduring treasures of the movies, a film of inspiration and meticulous craft." Ebert gave the film four stars out of four and included it in his Great Movies list. John McCarten of The New Yorker referred to the film as "a jolly, carefree enterprise". Richard Roud, writing for The Guardian in 1967, said with this film Wilder comes "close to perfection".

[struth]

The Searchers, 1956. Directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, set during the Texas–Indian wars, and starring John Wayne as a middle-aged Civil War veteran who spends years looking for his abducted niece (Natalie Wood), accompanied by his adoptive nephew (Jeffrey Hunter).





The Searchers has been cited as one of the greatest films of all time, such as in the BFI's decennial Sight & Sound polls. In 1972, The Searchers was ranked 18th; in 1992, 5th; in 2002, 11th; in 2012, 7th. In a 1959 Cahiers du Cinema essay, Godard compared the movie's ending with that of the reuniting of Odysseus with Telemachus in Homer's Odyssey. In 1963, he ranked The Searchers as the fourth-greatest American movie of the sound era, after Scarface (1932), The Great Dictator (1940), and Vertigo (1958). The 2007 American Film Institute 100 greatest American films list ranked The Searchers in 12th place. In 1998, TV Guide ranked it 18th. In 2008, the American Film Institute named The Searchers as the greatest Western of all time. In 2010, Richard Corliss noted the film was "now widely regarded as the greatest Western of the 1950s, the genre's greatest decade" and characterized it as a "darkly profound study of obsession, racism, and heroic solitude".

The film currently maintains a 96% approval rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 48 reviews, with an average rating of 9/10. The site's critics' consensus reads: "The Searchers is an epic John Wayne Western that introduces dark ambivalence to the genre that remains fashionable today."

Magnificent film.

[struth]

Sherlock Holmes, 2009. Directed by Guy Ritchie ... Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law portray Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson.

[Roy S]

https://kottke.org/15/01/anthony-bourdain-parts-unknown

Salads in Burma

[struth]

Blow Out, 1981. Written and directed by Brian De Palma. It stars John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow and Dennis Franz.

This is the Criterion Bluray.






The New Yorker, Pauline Kael gave the film one of her few unconditional raves:

"De Palma has sprung to the place that Robert Altman achieved with films such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Nashville and that Francis Ford Coppola reached with The Godfather films — that is, to the place where genre is transcended and what we're moved by is an artist's vision...it's a great movie. Travolta and Allen are radiant performers".

Roger Ebert's four-star review in the Chicago Sun-Times noted that Blow Out "is inhabited by a real cinematic intelligence".

[struth]

Apocalypse Now(final Cut), 1979. Directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. It stars Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, Harrison Ford, and Dennis Hopper.





Real human corpses were bought from a man who turned out to be a grave-robber. The police took the film crew's passports and questioned them, and then soldiers came and took the bodies away.

At times, Dennis Hopper tormented Marlon Brando, leading Brando to refuse to be on the set at the same time as Hopper.

[struth]

The Final Countdown, 1980. Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, James Farentino, Katharine Ross and Charles Durning star.

[Barry]

Catherine the Great



Made for Sky TV and starring the devine Helen Mirren (who was also an executive producer), this is a pig's ear of a production. Sumptious sets and costumes, there are several flaws in detail and an absolutely dire script!

[Barry]

Local Hero



A wonderful, funny and life affirming films.

If you liked 'Gregory's Girl' (but thought it a bit 'twee'), then Bill Forsyth does better this time around.