"Well, I'd say this territory has quite a future." - some guy at the end of the movie.

I've recently written a paper about The Virginian (both the 1929 and the 1946) and the way so many pre-1950s Westerns are about territories becoming domesticated, a plot that is usually mapped on to the protagonist HIMself. To do this, government has to make its way in and mercenary interests expunged and killed, which creates a complicated moral circumstance where virtuous men…

he kid who made this was born in 2006. That's absurd. I'm 48, and my schnauzer is 10, and we can't get Renate Reinsve to hang out with us (Renate is perhaps THE most luminous screen presence)

If you're a fan of the game The Stanley Parable or Davy Whedren's other games, or you like to look at pictures of liminal spaces, you'll love this movie. If you watched that video essay that explains how Kubrick made sure you could…

The blueprint for what I call the "schlubby" action movie, defined by its cruddiness and its lack of conventional heroes and villains. This one features one of the good guys saying about the stranded subway hostages, "what the hell did they expect for their lousy 35 cents - to live forever?" Our hero is Walter Matthau, and the cop in charge is Frank Costanza himself, Jerry Stiller.

While the villain is played by a cool-as-ice Robert Shaw, so relaxed that…

I wrote about this here:

andytown.wordpress.com/2020/05/15/gregory-peck-in-i-walk-the-line/

The 1960s were a pretty good decade for Gregory Peck, at least the first part. As he entered his fifties, Peck was the rare youthful Adonis who aged gradually rather than dramatically into a mix of paternal roles and sophisticated action films. Other hunks of his period – Kirk Douglas and William Holden, for instance – withered into stately raisins, while Burt Lancaster and Robert Mitchum began to look grey and grandfatherly. But, sort…