Discovering good movies, one bad movie at a time

Barbara Stanwyck – the most sarcastic, mercilessly incisive leading lady of her generation, a biting sophisticate in the body of a tough dame. Samuel Fuller – the great journalist-director whose films have the precision and authenticity of a no-bullshit reporter, with the sensationalism of a man who knows the best way to get people to […]

We have in front of us one of the most passionate films I think I’ve ever seen, the movie that the great B-picture master Sam Fuller always regarded as his favorite out of a long career heavy with some of the best American movies that most people have never heard of. The film in question […]

In 1962, John Ford, the greatest and most important director of Westerns to ever live, closed the book on his favored genre with a single, incredibly famous line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” That line was spoken by a newspaper […]

As usual, Martin Scorsese put it best: “It’s been said that if you don’t like The Rolling Stones, then you don’t like rock ‘n’ roll. By the same token, I think that if you don’t like the films of Sam Fuller, then you just don’t like cinema.” Bold words, but merely accurate. And quietly suggestive, […]

It’s received wisdom that there is no such thing as an anti-war movie, because movies make everything exciting, although like much received wisdom, that’s a lie. I think that this has seemed to be the case at least in part precisely because the films we allow to tell us about warfare are made by well-meaning […]