When I Stop Dreaming

1950. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Huston. Directed by Anthony Mann. There are movies that have used the Hollywood western as a package to tell a different story — The Magnificent Seven is the Hollywood western version of Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, for example. And there are those Hollywood westerns that transformed the genre  — The Searchers would inspire Taxi Driver, for example, or The Wild Bunch’s violence would soften up audiences for the blood supplied by Bonnie & Clyde and Tarantino. The Furies accomplished a bit of both, mixing Greek tragedy with Douglas Sirk soap-opera complications, and setting it all …

1961. Starring Allen Baron. Directed by Allen Baron. I would have never know about this film without seeing the Criterion Collection logo on its cover. A late US film noir, it is quite apparently a labor of love for Baron, who not only wrote the screenplay and directed the film, but stars as lonely hitman Frank Bono, after original lead Peter Falk dropped out. It has all the elements of an auteur favorite — many scenes were filmed on the streets of Brooklyn and Harlem by a car-transported camera, and it features a hard-boiled but flowery narration (provided by the …

1963. Starring Paul Newman, Patricia Neal. Directed by Martin Ritt. There’s no other actor I’d rather be than Paul Newman. Not only handsome and cool, but humble and talented enough to play an anti-hero like Hud. “An unprincipled man,” as his father (Melvyn Douglas) describes him, Hud spends his days resentfully working the family ranch and his nights drinking and romancing married women. Hud lives under a shadow, responsible for his older brother’s death and never living up to his father’s expectations. His one fan is his brother’s son, Lonnie (Brandon de Wilde), who at 17 is starting to feel …

1958. Starring Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh. Directed by Orson Welles. Hollywood never knew how to handle a genius like Orson Welles, which may be why he’s such an enigma today. When I was growing up, he was a walking metaphor for unrestrained appetites and shameful failure, self-deprecating in his TV appearances and insincere in his grotesque-gourmand image of a pitchman for Gallo wine. Only years later, after seeing Citizen Kane and The Third Man and Lady From Shanghai, did I realize that I had misjudged him. Once I saw Touch of Evil, though, my appreciation of Welles took …

1950. Starring John Dall, Peggy Cummins. Directed by Joseph H. Lewis. The greatest film noir of all time is essentially a love story: love between a man and a woman and their love for guns. When Bart Tare (John Dall) meets Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins), it’s love at first shot. Bart has just quit as an Army sharpshooter (after a spell in reform school for stealing handguns), and Laurie is starring as a trick shooter in a carnival. Their on-stage flirtation is an incredible scene, as Laurie coyly points at Bart with her pistol as he challenges her to …

1968. Directed by Albert and David Maysles. The men employed by the Mid-America Bible Company have a product that belongs in every home, and comes complete with the blessing of Pope Paul. It should be easy to sell, but the good men followed on their calls in this amazing documentary face closing doors, customers unwilling to commit to a payment plan, and a sales manager who is “sick and tired of being sick and tired of their excuses.” I first saw the Maysles Brothers’ Salesman back in college, but its portrayal of despondent, chain-smoking, cynical door-to-door salesmen has stuck with …

2008. Starring Seth Rogen, James Franco. Directed by David Gordon Green. The cinematic love-child of Pulp Fiction and Up in Smoke, conceived in a beanbag and delivered during a coughing fit, Pineapple Express is a buddy movie that somehow devolves into an over-the-top bloodbath. Seth Rogen and his co-writer Evan Goldberg wrote the screenplay years ago, and Rogen’s success in Knocked Up, Superbad, and The 40-Year-Old Virgin helped get this made, as well as getting Rogen the lead in the upcoming The Green Lantern epic. Rogen stars as a process server who wants to be a talk-radio host, but spends …

1971. Starring James Taylor, Dennis Wilson, Laurie Bird, Warren Oates. Directed by Monte Hellman. A race across country between aimless youth in a 1955 Chevrolet and pointless adulthood in a 1970 GTO, with the affection and attention of a faithless teenager as the prize, Monte Hellman’s fantastic Two-Lane Blacktop is one of my favorite movies, right down to the then-controversial ending. The Driver (Taylor) and The Mechanic (Wilson), fresh from hustling locals with home-built hot rods, aren’t far along in “heading east” when The Girl (Bird) hops in their backseat. She watches them as they drive in silence, listening for …

1944. Starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson. Directed by Billy Wilder. “I couldn’t hear my own footsteps.” So says Walter Neff, who has just sold his soul. But you have to admit, it was a pretty good sale – as an insurance agent, he knew how the accident policy would pay off, even “double indemnity” if the person named in the policy died in certain circumstances, such as an unlikely fall from a train. And with the help of the unhappy wife, he was in the position to make that unlikely accident occur exactly by plan. This sounds …

1955. Starring Jean Servais. Directed by Jules Dassin. Has there ever been a cinematic caper that has gone to plan? Jules Dassin filmed one of the best, an unforgettable crime tutorial, where the “Rififi” – the rough-and-tumble men – are willing to risk everything for a successful heist. The craggy Jean Servais leads a group of conspirators who have every step of the crime planned, every move timed, every potential hazard covered. Their target is a secure jewelry store, and their planning pays off to the tune of 240 million francs. But you know that something’s going to go wrong. …