Anthony Mann’s thriller The Tall Target is similar in spirit and style to his contemporary film noir works of the late 1940s, including T-Men and Raw Deal. A crackerjack suspense film produced by MGM, The Tall Target also happens to be an uncommonly effective piece of historical fiction and a uniquely vivid period piece. It’s [...]

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Some exceptional movies are so gentle, and achieve their effects so delicately, that the mere act of recommending them almost feels like a disservice to their charms. Can such movies bear the weight of high expectations? I fear overpraising MGM’s Stars in My Crown because of its simplicity and modesty, two elements that make it [...]

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One of the first works of visionary Stanley Kubrick, The Killing is everything that made him famous: aesthetically interesting, subdued, and stylized. While his later works such as Eyes Wide Shut are a bit too overthought for John DiLeo’s taste, this film captures the genius of Kubrick in its clean following of Johnny Clay’s plan [...]

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In 1968, a little movie named Pretty Poison took this decades-old formula and gave it a bracing spin. The film’s male character isn’t a typically hard-edged realist, but, rather, an emotionally immature arsonist with an overripe imagination. And in place of the expectedly glamorous, experienced woman, there’s a 17-year-old, honor-roll vixen whose ruthlessness is concealed [...]

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Ricardo Montalban and George Murphy team up in another of Anthony Mann’s classic films, Border Incident. The film is more than just a story of U.S.-Mexican border crossings, however, because of its film noir mystery and intrigue. While similar to T-Men, Border Incident provides a more humanitarian viewpoint of the particularly modern issue while maintaining [...]

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