Peter Strempel’s essays on cinema, and film reviews.
Spellbound (1945)
Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound remains captivating, though contexts have changed for genres, subject, and artistic treatment.
Film
This Gun for Hire (1942)
Not the noir some claim, but an outstanding hybrid with a powerful performance from Ladd and impressive mises en scène.
Breaker Morant (1980)
A landmark Australian film made relevant afresh as we consider contemporary war crimes.
Kingdom of Heaven (2005): two very different films
This is Ridley Scott’s most significant film, deserving a re-evaluation after the disaster that was the studio edit.
Fight Club (1999), 20 years later
Fight Club is not quite the celebration of toxic masculinity and anarchic revolt often assumed.
Scorsese’s The Irishman: sad farewell to an era
Scorsese and the cast of The Irishman say farewell to each other and an entire era of gangster films.
Werk ohne Autor / Never Look Away (2018)
Von Donnersmarck explores the effect of tyranny on truth and beauty with some surprising conclusions.
Michael Caine & The Fourth Protocol (1987) … sort of
Not among Caine’s top ten, but Forth Protocol was nevertheless more entertaining than most contemporary dross.
A Prayer for the Dying (1987)
Mickey Rourke was pedestrian in Prayer for the Dying, but this Jack Higgins story about an IRA assassin resonates with my past.
Thirty years of tracking Hannibal Lecter
How Hannibal Lecter became so much part of our culture that we are not even shocked by his crimes anymore.
The Vietnam War (2017): I
Brilliant, arresting, insightful, the Burns-Novick documentary is a masterpiece of propaganda not entirely negatively defined.
The Vietnam War (2017): II
The second part of my commentary on the arresting, brilliant Burns-Novick documentary.
The Vietnam War (2017): III
The third part of my commentary on the arresting, brilliant Burns-Novick documentary.
The Vietnam War (2017): IV
The fourth and final part of my commentary on the arresting, brilliant Burns-Novick documentary, The Vietnam War.
Dark Passage (1947) as locus of film noir
Dark Passage is an extended metaphor for the anti-communist witch-hunting in the USA during the 1940s and ’50s.