One of my Christmas presents was the Criterion Collection DVD of The Night of the Hunter, one of my all-time favorite movies.  It’ll be quite a while before I actually watch the movie, so consumed am I with all the extras.  Though I haven’t even gotten to the second disc, there are plenty of jewels on [...]

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When I was a kid, Blake Edwards’ elaborately zany farce The Great Race (1965) was one of my favorite movies, mostly because of Jack Lemmon’s splendidly over-the-top renditions of two roles:  the film’s dastardly villain and its queeny prince.  It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this very long movie, so I wonder if [...]

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It’s hard to write about classic movies without continually stumbling upon Van Heflin, one of the best things to happen to movies from the mid-thirties to the early seventies (but especially in the fifties).  December 13 marks the 100th anniversary of his birth, though Heflin has been gone a long time, dying at only 60 in 1971.  He [...]

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Reuniting the cast of Payment Deferred (1932)–Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Ray Milland–The Big Clock is a nifty, clever thriller with a glamorous publishing-world setting.  Milland operates Crimeways magazine, one of several publications owned by Laughton, an imperious, feared, and hands-on kind of boss.  When Milland foolishly goes out drinking with Laughton’s mistress (Rita Johnson), missing [...]

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