Shoot the Glass

I must admire Charlie Chaplin. This movie, in which he mocks Hitler and the Nazis (as well as Mussolini), came out as early as 1940. According to IMDb, Chaplin said that had he known the true extent of Nazi atrocities, he “could not have made fun of their homicidal insanity”. Still, it was brave at [...]

When you watch a movie by (and starring) Charlie Chaplin, you can be sure of two things; it’s going to be funny, and it’s going to have a heart. At least that’s true of all his movies I’ve seen so far.
The story is a simple one. The titular kid (an adorable Jackie Coogan) is abandoned [...]

Before this, I had only seen two movies by Akira Kurosawa: Rashômon and Seven Samurai. And even though I found the former to be pretty standard (especially having seen the same technique used many times since) and the latter to be drawn-out and rather dull, I was impressed by both. There’s no denying Kurosawa had [...]

This has long been one of the nagging black holes in my Rickman education. It was never commercially released on DVD, which annoyed many Alan Rickman fans. After a petition online, Mike Binder and his brother Jack (acting as producer) decided to release it for themselves, and it can now finally be purchased from their [...]

Up until only a few years ago, I had not seen any Marx Brothers movies. Then I bought myself a box set (which included Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup), and sat down to watch those in just two afternoons. I loved every minute of them, and don’t believe I ever laughed [...]