Month: June 2020
-
DeaconsDen Classic Reaction – Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope
Rope is easily my second favorite Hitchcock film. Like Psycho it possesses an unease throughout its runtime. Unlike Psycho, which the unease is due to all the information you don’t have, Rope has no mystery. The murder opens the film. We witness the sociopathic activity of a dinner party in which Brandon and Phillip invite…
-
A Leone Double Feature: The Last Days of Pompeii & The Colossus of Rhodes
I discovered Sergio Leone in college when I rented The Good, the Bad and the Ugly from the library. It was the film that got me into the western as genre. It wasn’t long until I was able to watch A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. Eventually I discovered the greatness…
-
DeaconsDen Classic Reaction- Saboteur
Saboteur remains a solid middle tier Hitchcock thriller. I actually enjoy it more than Foreign Correspondent which was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars 2 years prior. It treads the line between strongly serious and 40s Hollywood schmaltz. Saboteur has a few really nifty suspenseful sequences. The opening titles set the tone with the…
-
DeaconsDen Classic Reaction – Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
Psycho is my favorite film that Alfred Hitchcock directed. It was the first film of his I ever saw. It’s pretty much his most well known feature. It’s one of a few masterpieces that he had during his career alongside Rebecca, Rear Window, Vertigo and North by Northwest. I have always been of the mind…
-
DeaconsDen Classic Reaction – Topaz
In order to watch Topaz, you have to go into it with different expectations. It’s not the usual Hitchcock we’re familiar with. It’s not a splashy thriller like Notorious or Saboteur. There’s no Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ingrid Bergman or Grace Kelly. No Saul Bass titles or Bernard Herrmann score. There’s no individual getting swept…
-
DeaconsDen Classic Reaction- The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
As Darth Vader told Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas’ Star Wars, “The circle is now complete.” The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, completes Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy. And with that we no longer simply have an Italian director dabbling in the genre of the western, we have a new sub-genre of the Italian Western.…
-
DeaconsDen Classic Reaction – For A Few Dollars More
For a Few Dollars More is a prime example of always giving a movie a second chance. For years this was my least favorite of the Dollars Trilogy. My last viewing really opened my eyes and now it sits high upon my personal western canon. The big story of For a Few Dollars More is…
DeaconsDen 