Peter Strempel’s essays on cinema, and film reviews.
The Glass Key (1942)
Stuart Heisler’s screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammet’s The Glass Key gives us a character study of the noir anti-hero as descended from Eve and the original sin.
Film
Crossfire (1947)
Edward Dmytryk’s 1947 Crossfire courageously attacks the bigotry of antisemitism and, more subtly, homophobia, on a shoestring budget but with outstanding performances.
Citizen Kane (1941)
Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) is not quite the unsurpassed masterpiece often claimed, but it is nevertheless a considerable cinematic achievement.
Laura 1944
Laura (1944) is an entertaining murder mystery melodrama, highly acclaimed in its own time, but not really a film noir as uncritically and widely claimed today.
Spellbound (1945)
Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound remains captivating, though contexts have changed for genres, subject, and artistic treatment.
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.