crimeonfilm.com
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All Aboard Guy Ritchie’s Quick-Cut, Malevolent Joy Ride
Normally I write here about movies and TV shows I’ve seen. But two Netflix discs have been sitting unwatched on my coffee table for nearly three weeks. It’s been my cuckoo writing schedule that prevents me from hunkering down and watching stuff I’d like to see. The two on-deck films are both Guy Ritchie-directed movies,…
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The Bad, The Horrible And The Unbalanced
They say good villains make good drama. Here are my Top 5 favorite crime film villains. These five are particularly memorable as some of the screen’s finest psychopaths. They look and sound normal at first. But if you cross them, things quickly become unpleasant. 1.) Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) “Cape Fear” Max turns the crazy…
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The Humanity of a ‘Mad Dog’ in ‘High Sierra’
In “High Sierra” (1941), Humphrey Bogart is Roy “Mad Dog” Earle, an ex-con who is full of contradictions. Earle, apparently a hardened criminal, gets sprung from prison, and the first place he wants to go is to a park, where the grass is growing underfoot and he can breathe the fresh air. He may be…
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Tabloid Photog Had Eye For Public Drama
“He will take his camera and ride off in search of new evidence that his city, even in her most drunken and disorderly and pathetic moments, is beautiful.” – William McCleery in ‘Naked City’ New York shutterbug Arthur Fellig, AKA “Weegee” (June 12, 1899 – Dec. 26, 1968) didn’t invent tabloid photography, but he turned…
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Gangsters And Grifters: Know Your Favorite Betes Noire
I’ve seen lots of stories online these days about film noir, and that may mean that there’s an uptick in noir interest among movie fans. The question is: What exactly is a film noir, and how do you know if the movie you’re watching is one? Here are a few of my own guidelines to…
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Get ‘Ruthless’ Via Online Streaming, Or Get Gone
The New York Times will report in its Sunday edition that Edgar G. Ulmer’s “Ruthless”(1948), is available to stream from Netflix in its full 105 minute version, rather than the 88-minute public domain cut that’s been the only version available for years. Ulmer is also known for classic noirs “Detour” (1945) and “The Black Cat”…
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Wacky Neighbor Whitey Coming To A Sitcom Near You?
Everybody Loves Whitey Twentieth Century Fox has made a deal with writer-producer Peter Mehlman for a new comedy pilot about a young couple who get a new neighbor: notorious mobster Whitey Bulger. That makes a great deal of sense because Whitey was a million laughs. Just ask the people he extorted money from and terrorized.…
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Bogart Still Center Stage As American Screen Idol
I talk about film here for the most part, but I would be shirking my duty as a reporter if I didn’t mention a book that I finished reading some time ago that deserves to be noted in this forum. It’s Stefan Kanfer’s biography of Humphrey Bogart, “Tough Without A Gun: The Life and Extraordinary…
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Let There Be ‘Brighton Rock’
Some great news: “Brighton Rock,” the acclaimed new adaptation of Graham Greene‘s classic novel, will be seen in U.S. theaters August 26, thanks to IFC. The film depicts the story of Pinkie, a lowly gangster who romances a naive, lonely waitress, Rose, after she discovers evidence he committed murder.Fans of British cinema will certainly remember…
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Remembering the City’s Prince of Pulp
“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”— Raymond Chandler, “Farewell, My Lovely,” 1940 This Saturday, July 23, marks the 123rd anniversary of the birth of one of this city’s greatest fiction writers, Raymond Chandler. Chandler was born on July 23, 1888 in Chicago. But…