Vertigo: I Put a Spell on You

James Stewart and Kim Novak. Photo: Paramount One of Alfred Hitchcock's three 1950s Technicolor masterpieces (the others are Rear Window and North by Northwest). Curiously enough, at the time of…

E.T. The Thing from Another World

Henry Thomas. Photo: Universal When Richard Attenborough accepted his two Oscars for Gandhi in 1983, he acknowledged the fact that he had just beaten one of the favorites. "I was…

The Graduate: Still As Seductive

Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman. Photo: Embassy Pictures Reading Roger Ebert's two reviews of The Graduate, written thirty years apart, is a little strange. In my view he gets almost…

The Godfather II: From Rags to Riches

Al Pacino. Photo: Paramount The Godfather was an incredible achievement by Francis Ford Coppola. Making a sequel that meets at least some of the expectations is difficult enough, but actually…

The Godfather: Paying in Blood

Marlon Brando. Photo: Paramount There's a scene in You've Got Mail (1998) where Tom Hanks says, "The Godfather is the sum of all wisdom. The Godfather is the answer to…

Casablanca: You Must Remember This

Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Photo: Warner Casablanca was just another movie meant to bolster the spirit of American audiences at a time when the nation had just entered an…

Bride of Frankenstein: They Belong Dead

Elsa Lanchester and Colin Clive. Photo: Universal Perhaps the filmmakers felt that their original adaptation of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" came up short. The 1931 film left out much of the…

Se7en: A Tour of Sins

Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. Photo: New Line Cinema Director David Fincher's first feature, Alien³ (1992), had the misfortune of following in the footsteps of some of Ridley Scott's and…

All the President’s Men: Exposing a CREEP

Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. Photo: Warner When I was in journalism school, I took a course in investigative journalism. That particular genre is still the finest you can do…