What I love best about NOTORIOUS is how the style of the film morphs with the dramatic arc of the story, moving from claustrophobic two shots to Hitchcock's more typical P.O.V. centered montage when the action moves to the mansion.  In VERTIGO, the style is unrelentingly obsessive, imposing a directorial perspective…

Once Upon a Time in the West
The Wild Bunch
Seven Samurai

Once Upon a Time in the West
The Wild Bunch
Seven Samurai

Bane's use of political rhetoric serves his character and the plot but little else, topicality wise.  Considering that Banes audience consists of mercenaries and thugs, and not the 99% of Gotham's residents, metaphors to the Occupy movement are tenuous at best.  As mentioned in Tadzios post above, its more likely that…

Bane's use of political rhetoric serves his character and the plot but little else, topicality wise.  Considering that Banes audience consists of mercenaries and thugs, and not the 99% of Gotham's residents, metaphors to the Occupy movement are tenuous at best.  As mentioned in Tadzios post above, its more likely that…

If  you are referring to Bane. I tend to disagree with the thrust of your comment because  the character doesn't really act out of a coherent political ideology.   Bane's Jacobinism seems directed at no audience in particular accept for Bane, his henchmen and the freed prisoners.  His political rhetoric, like…

If  you are referring to Bane. I tend to disagree with the thrust of your comment because  the character doesn't really act out of a coherent political ideology.   Bane's Jacobinism seems directed at no audience in particular accept for Bane, his henchmen and the freed prisoners.  His political rhetoric, like…

Seconded

Seconded

I'm kicking myself for missing THE RECKLESS MOMENT on TCM last week.

I'm kicking myself for missing THE RECKLESS MOMENT on TCM last week.

I'd give a shout out to THE LAST BOLSHEVIK as well, the best documentary about a filmmaker ever made—with Marker's Tarkovsky film a close second.

My sense was that it had a hard core following among Hitchcock auteurists but that it wasn't an "essential" classic among cinephiles until the late 70s. Having been kept out of circulation for over 20 years enhanced its mystique as well.  I agree with both the pros and the cons presented above, and from having heard…

Hitchcock blamed Kim Novak for the initial lukewarm response, with whom he had a tense working relationship.  Truffaut found this assessment rather baffling.  It opened the same week in New York as TOUCH OF EVIL and both movies got slammed in the New York Times.

Good Call.  Even the Carpenter fans I knew were incensed by it when it came out.  I don't understand why.

The subject of movies whose mediocre to poor initial reception was revived by critical re-evaluation would make a great inventory:  TOUCH OF EVIL, THE SEARCHERS, VERTIGO, RULES OF THE GAME, HEAVENS GATE etc.

The subject of movies whose mediocre to poor initial reception was revived by critical re-evaluation would make a great inventory:  TOUCH OF EVIL, THE SEARCHERS, VERTIGO, RULES OF THE GAME, HEAVENS GATE etc.

Saw it there too on opening weekend—and it struck me as being fairly well received, but that wasn't probably typical at the time.  I seem to recall hearing that certain "audience friendly" screenings at Sundance or some other festivals were rather lukewarm, so expectations were kind of diminished for it, particularly…

Saw it there too on opening weekend—and it struck me as being fairly well received, but that wasn't probably typical at the time.  I seem to recall hearing that certain "audience friendly" screenings at Sundance or some other festivals were rather lukewarm, so expectations were kind of diminished for it, particularly…

When I first saw this on Z Channel in the late 70s the audio was almost indecipherable.  Subsequent screenings I attended at UCLA presented prints where the sound was even worse or the print breaking down.  I finally saw a restrored version in the early 90s