Kevin Costner’s Big Gamble
The iconic actor-director’s new custody drama, “Black or White,” offers a fresh, poignant, and sometimes funny treatment of an old social wound.
Deep Black Noir: “Double Indemnity”
“Murder sometimes can smell like honeysuckle…” Patrick Coffin The film noir genre is on dark, velvety display in such films as The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Big Sleep (1946),The Postman Always Rings Twice (adapted in seven different films since 1946). But director Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) uniquely typifies film noir and provides an enduring […]
Non-believers Make the Best Saint Movies: Monsieur Vincent
“It is only because of your love that the poor will forgive you the bread that you give them.” Patrick Coffin When Christians make movies about saints, they sometimes succeed as hagiography, always make their intended audiences feel good, and almost always fail as art. Christians often can’t resist the temptation to tell the story […]
The Sound of Music: The Last Drop of Golden Sun
“Only grown-up men are scared of women.” Patrick Coffin The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music marked the culmination of creativity by the team that wrote Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and I. It also marked the end of an era. In a sense, it was released at the pre-dawn of the Sixties—not the […]
The Lingering Trance of Green Dolphin Street
“Our whole marriage has been a…slip of the pen?” Patrick Coffin Some movies linger in your spirit for long stretches. They put you in a trance—disturbed, humorous, or charmed, depending. You re-watch them (let’s call them atmospheric films) and the trance returns thicker, and even more pleasant. Green Dolphin Street (1947) belongs in this charming […]
Frank Capra’s Forgotten Christmas Classic
“Meet John Doe” is surprisingly current, even timeless, in its examination of ambition, identity, and repentance Patrick Coffin Bring to mind a scene from a Frank Capra movie: a good man stricken with despair stands at a great height pondering suicide; the snow falls softly all around; it’s Christmas Eve. No, not It’s a Wonderful […]
The Unbearable Frightness of Being
The Exorcist turns 40. Patrick Coffin The shaking bed. The frantic mother. The faithless priest duking it out with the demon upstairs—and oh, that spinning head. These and other iconic images from The Exorcist (1973) are burned into our collective movie-going consciousness. The film is reckoned invariably as the scariest film ever made and the […]