I think this is a silly trope. Like that dumb myth that people ran screaming out of movie theaters when they saw the moving train coming “at them.” It’s such a hacky joke, oh look at the rube from 1919 who is gobsmacked by our modern inventions. There is no way dude would have been blown away by a fucking escalator.…

The Man Who Came to Dinner captures that “everyone under one roof chaos” that reminds me of my favorite Christmases.

I understand your view of Man Who Came to Dinner. Sheridan Whiteside is horrible (and funny), especially early in the film, but he softens—to some of the Ohioans, at least—by the end. I don’t like the regional prejudice either, but I feel like it’s mixed in with an anti-bourgeois attitude that’s a bit easier to take.

Remember the Night is a favorite Christmas movie in our house. It’s a tighter story than Christmas in Connecticut (although we love that too), mostly because it’s not a screwball comedy. But it’s still funny, and Stanwyck and MacMurray are great together.

Thanks, Caroline, for a great piece on a wonderful, now somewhat forgotten film. I watch it every Christmas and it is a real gem on multiple levels and beautifully made. It’s worth mentioning how Warner Brothers went against the Hollywood tide of black stereotypes with both this movie and “Casablanca” and while…

William Haines starred in “Show People”, one of the very best movies of the whole silent era.  Filled with cameos, really fun portrait of Hollywood moviemaking in 1928.

I can see what you’re saying. Some of the movies are more an examination of the social constructs that generate assholes, while some of them are just about assholes. The worst offender for me is “Kiss Me Stupid,” which is downright mean, sexist, and cheap.  It’s almost indefensible, and viewers at the time certainly…

I don’t think Billy Wilder really liked anybody, men or women. There was a constant ugly undercurrent to his pictures that implied pretty much everybody on earth was selfish and dumb, and only Billy Wilder was disgusted enough to say it. I could see this being the point of a movie here and there, but he just seemed to…

It’s one of the reasons that Masculin Féminin really doesn’t work for me. I just don’t find that Chantal Goya is anything more than an object for Léaud.

“Holiday” has my favourite Hepburn performance of all her films. Her character is ridiculously loveable. And the movie does a better job of spotlighting classism and how it can ruin genuine interaction. 

“And it’s also full of moments that other filmmakers have quoted”

It’s certainly inferior to this movie, which uses excellent effects work to show the kids’ drastic physical alteration, while Dead Poets Society lazily tries to convey its characters’ change in size merely by having them stand on desks.

Because honest criticism would seem to call for it?

I’m betting that the entire final six episodes will consist of the debt negotiations with the Iron Bank and then Westeros declaring bankruptcy. The supposed giant battle at the end of the penultimate episode is actually the review of the various schedules by the bankruptcy trustee, followed by a giant auction, ending…

I found Platform incredibly fascinating, it’s long but worth it.

This and Transit were the two I caught during the 2018 film festival circuit that stuck with me the most - I can’t even begin to figure out how many fully-contained genre pieces Zhangke shoves into this magnificent monster of a movie. Also, contains what may be the most visceral fight scene I’ve seen in a few years -…

That fits my general hypothesis. I figured there had to be some difficulty in building apps for them that doesn’t justify the developer time versus the expected return or that it was hard to get apps approved or something. Development or placement fees could definitely be an obstacle in that area.

I’ve considered…

Good to see Andre Holland working with Soderbergh again after The Knick.

It’s too bad that we haven’t gotten more original movie musicals from some of our best songwriters. In the late 80s Stephen Sondheim teamed up with William Goldman on script and director Rob Reiner (back when he was interesting) to do an original movie musical, Singing Out Loud. The script doesn’t sound amazing, but…

Counterpoint, Tom Hooper DID make an exclusively bad movie in Les Miserables, quite possibly the worst film of all you listed here, including the baffling terrible Greatest Showman which at LEAST was trying to do something fun.