Shoot the Glass

What intrigued me most about High Noon was the story I had heard about how John Wayne and Howard Hawks both hated it, and went on to make Rio Bravo as a right-wing response to it. Apparently, Wayne saw it as an allegory for blacklisting, which he himself had actively supported. In an interview, he [...]

The Apartment won a whole slew of Oscars in 1961, not least of which was the Best Picture gong. I had never seen it and didn’t really know what to expect. I have enjoyed many of Wilder’s movies before (both Stalag 17 and Sunset Blvd. are among my favourites), but he always manages to surprise [...]

I think it’s only fair that I start this review by telling you the conditions under which I saw it. It was day three of Ebertfest 2007, in the packed Virginia theatre, with 1,500 other film fans. It was evening and we had been in the theatre all day. It was hot — stifling, actually, [...]