You Can’t Take It With You: Enjoy It Now

Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Jean Arthur and Edward Arnold. Photo: Columbia With It Happened One Night (1934), Frank Capra had already won an Oscar for Best Director. The same honor…

The Greatest Show on Earth

Often labeled one of the worst Best Picture Oscar winners ever, this look at all the drama behind the scenes of a big top circus still is a grand epic.…

Rope 

Brandon and Phillip (John Dall, Farley Granger) strangle a former classmate to death and hide his body in a wooden chest in their apartment, moments before hosting a party where…

It’s a Wonderful Life: Wing and a Prayer

James Stewart, Donna Reed, Carol Coombs, Jimmy Hawkins, Larry Simms and Karolyn Grimes. Photo: RKO This Christmas I decided to catch Frank Capra's last masterpiece again. Having seen it several…

North and South: Book II 

When we meet the Mains and Hazards again, the Northern and Southern families are pitted against each other as the Civil War unfolds; the miniseries takes us through it. Elaborate,…

Ziegfeld Girl 

In the 1920s, three girls (Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr) join the Ziegfeld Follies and handle the challenges of stardom in different ways. Originally meant to be a straight…

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…

Rear Window: A View to a Kill

James Stewart. Photo: Paramount This masterpiece from Alfred Hitchcock reunited the director with James Stewart from Rope (1948), another thriller that was set entirely in one apartment. This film has…

The Man Who Knew Too Much 

For some reason, Alfred Hitchcock felt that the 1934 version of this story was something he could improve upon; if he was wrong or not is still a matter of…