Christopher Saunders

LATEST ARTICLES ( 659 )

• It Happened One Night

  

  "I come from a long line of stubborn idiots."Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934) codified the modern romantic comedy, though it offers far more than... Read more

  Posted on 01 January 2017 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Best and Worst Film Viewings of 2016

  

  2016: The Bubonic Plague of YearsUgh.Nobody needs reminding that 2016 has been monumentally awful - politically, culturally, socially and personally. Read more

  Posted on 29 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• RIP Carrie Fisher

  

  “People want me to say that I’m sick of playing Leia and that it ruined my life. If my life was that easy to ruin, it deserved to be ruined. Read more

  Posted on 28 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Best & Worst Books Read in 2016

  

  Vice President Agnew with his literary masterpieceI've only done a book list once. This year seemed a good time to revisit the idea, considering that I read a... Read more

  Posted on 27 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Remember the Night

  

  Several years before plotting murder in Double Indemnity, Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray teamed up on this sweet-natured Christmas comedy. Read more

  Posted on 26 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• History: The Know-Nothing Party's Rise, Fall and Legacy, 1856

  

  The Nativist movement's violence exploded exponentially at the same time it became most respectable. In the mid-1850s, decades of anti-Catholic nationalism,... Read more

  Posted on 24 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• History: New York Know-Nothings and Forrest Fanboys Riot Over Shakespeare, 1849

  

  Antebellum America's bloodiest riot wasn't caused by cloistered convents, school Bibles or papal nuncios. While inflamed and exploited by Nativist rowdies, the... Read more

  Posted on 21 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Umberto D.

  

  (1952) marked the neorealist movement's last hurrah. International critics better appreciated Vittorio De Sica's bleak masterwork than his countrymen; domestic... Read more

  Posted on 20 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• History: Immigration, The Cardinal's Visit and the Resurgence of American...

  

  The violence in Philadelphia inspired outrage rather than copycats. Besides the general disgust over Nativist extremism, other issues occupied America's... Read more

  Posted on 19 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Stranger (1946)

  

  "Killing is what led you here. It won't help you now."The Stranger (1946) gave Orson Welles his biggest hit, mating his signature style to a popular melodrama. Read more

  Posted on 18 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Two Mrs. Carrolls

  

  "It's my opinion that beauty is worth any sacrifice."Reviewers generally dismiss The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) as a lesser effort for its stars, Humphrey Bogart... Read more

  Posted on 17 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice

  

  (2016) was that incredible thing: a blockbuster nobody liked. Critics torched it, most viewers seemed to despise it, yet it still made enough money to fund... Read more

  Posted on 16 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The State of the Blog, December 2016

  

  2016 has been as bad a year for me as everyone else, perhaps even more so, considering that I've lost my job and been struggling with severe depression ever... Read more

  Posted on 14 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Hitler's Madman

  

  This lurid wartime potboiler offered Douglas Sirk's Hollywood debut. Hitler's Madman (1943) dramatized a real Nazi atrocity months after it occurred; produced b... Read more

  Posted on 13 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• History: Philadelphia's Bible Battles, 1844

  

  Rebecca Reed's scandalous revelations (and the violence they inspired) triggered a slew of imitators. Perhaps the most absurd was Rosalind, a pseudo-memoir... Read more

  Posted on 12 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Lonely Are the Brave

  

  "I don't need a card to figure out who I am. I already know." Kirk Douglas considers Lonely Are the Brave (1962) his best movie, even though it flopped upon... Read more

  Posted on 11 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Lust for Life

  

  "If it's one thing I despise, it's emotionalism in painting." John Wayne enjoyed ribbing Kirk Douglas for playing Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956), as i... Read more

  Posted on 10 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• History: The Charlestown Convent and the Birth of American Hate

  

  Anti-Catholic sentiment came deeply engrained in the American psyche. Primarily English and overwhelmingly Protestant, America's earliest settlers carried racia... Read more

  Posted on 07 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• On Bernardo Bertolucci, Last Tango in Paris and Separating Art From Artist

  

  When the Internet started buzzing with outrage over Bernardo Bertolucci's conduct while making Last Tango in Paris this weekend, I was inclined to ignore it. Read more

  Posted on 06 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Cape Fear (1962)

  

  "I got something planned for your wife and kid that they ain't never gonna forget." Cape Fear (1962) reteams J. Lee Thompson and Gregory Peck, a year after thei... Read more

  Posted on 05 December 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES