Parallax View

I posted the piece on The Maltese Falcon last week. Today I rewatched a few minutes of They Won’t Forget and thought, let’s have a little remembrance for an indispensable man. This was written as an obit fifteen years ago. If they gave career Oscars to character actors, nobody would have had a better claim [...]

[Originally written for the National Society of Film Critics anthology The A List: 100 Essential Films (2002)] In 1539, the Knight Templars of Malta, paid tribute to Charles V of Spain, by sending him a Golden Falcon encrusted from beak to claw with rarest jewels – but pirates seized the galley carrying the priceless token and [...]

Humphrey Bogart: The Essential Collection (Warner) The Maltese Falcon Blu-ray (Warner) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Blu-ray (Warner) Humphrey Bogart was the first Hollywood star I embraced. Watching him hold down the center of Casablanca with a pose of populist existentialism covering his wounded romanticism (“Where were you last night?” “That’s so long ago, [...]

[Parts of the article previously appeared in Cinemonkey and as program notes for Cinema 7] Film critics have never quite known what to make of John Huston; whether his work has been praised or disparaged, it has almost always inspired critical overkill. After a striking debut with The Maltese Falcon (1941) and a pair of [...]