Until early last year, I was really into all things romance. Romantic comedies, Bollywood, young adult romances, the whole lot. But then I was exposed to brilliant films and realized for the first time that stories centered around romance just don't make for very compelling cinema. When the characters only care about getting together and staying together and continually spout cheesy dialogue, they almost always come off as irredeemably stupid.

I'm still a sucker for Austen novels and love songs, and always going to be an idealist about the forever kind of love. I just don't think that any film that treats love as the single most important thing in a person's life is going to appeal to me any…

Springcrime - The April & May Project

It's entirely possibly that Joseph H. Lewis could become one of my favourite directors very quickly.

Of the three (now four) films I've seen from him, My Name Is Julia Ross was my least favourite but even that had an unusual style to it that made it very hard to ignore or forget. The same could be said of the other films I've seen from him, but once again, this time in the case of Gun Crazy, he has allied that style with a splendid story and riveting characters as well.

I'm sure it's entirely down to the way I watch these kinds of films especially, but I don't always focus too much on…

Boy meets revolver meets girl, la mort et l’amour "like guns and ammunition." The starting point is a small-town orphan astride his wooden horsie, elated by his air rifle yet dismayed by the effect it has on a baby chick. Back from the reformatory and the military ("It gets dull, nothing but teaching guys how to shoot"), the neurotic marksman (John Dall) visits the local carnival and runs into the pint-sized personification of killer instinct: The British sharpshooter (Peggy Cummins) who storms the frame with guns blazing, scans the audience and unloads straight into the camera’s eye. (Their onstage competition, culminating in a crown of matches lit one by one by ricocheting bullets, is virtually a live sex show.) Honeymoon’s…

The alternate title Deadly Is the Female sums up this film pretty well. A seductive woman pulls a small town boy back down the road of trouble after reform school and the military put him on the straight and narrow. To be fair, we don't get a lot of scenes with "good" Bart--as soon as he meets Laurie, he's falling off the cliff, even if he hasn't hit bottom yet. It's an old trope, the femme fatale, though this film uses it a little more directly, and despite its inherent sexism that dates all the way back to Eve, there's a certain amount of appeal to it for me anyway. Mostly, what I like about it, is that as far…

One thing I love about watching older films is comparing the social norms of the time with now Obviously some movies will probably exaggerate certain things, but it's about considering the reasons and attitudes behind the writing.
A good example is the scene where Bart (as a kid played by a young Doctor Jacoby from Twin Peaks) brings a gun to school and everyone is enamoured by his new toy. The teacher simply gets annoyed with him and demands to confiscate it like it was a child's plaything. Consider gun culture and schools and how a scene like that would play today. Bart would be on the floor with a knee on his back.
This entire movie is very interesting…