by Walter Chaw Duck Soup (1933) U.S.: rental only Canada: n/a It's easy to see the Marx Brothers as a relic of their time. The challenge with introducing an American vaudeville comedy team from the turn of the twentieth century is finding a pathway that doesn't rely on condescension. Duck Soup (1933) is about the disastrous toll of a feckless narcissist holding the highest office in the land and how his enablers prop up a useful idiot who will protect their wealth and social position. Duck Soup, as I said, is about the United States in 2020. Vaudeville had its roots in…

by Walter ChawThe Seventh Seal (1957)U.S.: Criterion, Kanopy, FuboTV, Watch TCMCanada: CriterionI showed my wife Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal for the first time in 2003, when we were pregnant with my daughter. As we were watching, we both, separately, decided to name our baby after the Bibi Andersson character, Mia, because Mia in the film is surrounded by loved ones, free from worry, happy, and protected from the death and despair that surrounds her. As a joke, I tell people that our daughter was named after a character in The Seventh Seal: "My daughter's name is Antonius Block." It's…

by Walter ChawSherlock Jr. (1924)U.S.: Hoopla, Kanopy, IndiePixCanada: HooplaBuster Keaton is one of the "big four" silent comedians--a group that includes Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon--who produced a fascinating body of fraught work that is slyly progressive (especially in regards to gender) and sometimes uncomfortable. While the kids have seen films by all of these guys, I was happy to give them a recap of their personas: Langdon affected a child-like, wide-eyed, powdered, often "feminized" demeanour Chaplin's "Little Tramp" presented as a "hobo" archetype, poor and lovelorn and unfailingly optimistic Harold Lloyd's harried "Glass" persona was all bespectacled,…

The 39 Steps (1935)U.S.: Prime, Roku, Hoopla, CriterionCanada: Prime, Hoopla, Criterionby Walter ChawThere is no single director who has inspired more scholarship than Alfred Hitchcock.He made upwards of sixty films throughout his storied career, most of which survive. The first film considered to show the hallmarks of his work was his third completed feature, The Lodger, from 1926. Subtitled "A Story of the London Fog," it told the tale of a Jack the Ripper-styled murderer who may or may not be the same mysterious lodger staying with an unassuming family. Twenty films later, The 39 Steps was seen by many…

by Walter ChawJoe Versus the Volcano (1990)U.S.: Starz, DirecTVCanada: rental onlyJohn Patrick Shanley's Joe Versus the Volcano allows for a lovely introduction to both Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan right when their stardom was about to reach such great heights. Part of the Nineties pantheon of A-listers who had breakout films in the '80s (Hanks with Big in 1988, Ryan with When Harry Met Sally in 1989, her star-making moment), they collaborated twice more during the '90s on the outrageously popular Sleepless in Seattle and the Shop Around the Corner update You've Got Mail. Hanks/Ryan felt like relics from Old…

by Walter ChawConstantine (2005)U.S.: rental onlyCanada: Netflix, CraveAce music-video director Francis Lawrence made his feature-length debut with 2005's Constantine, an adaptation of the DC Vertigo comic-book series "Hellblazer". At the time, I resented it both for making the hero a Yank (he's British in the books) and for not casting Denis Leary as said foul-mouthed, chain-smoking Yank. Time has been kind to the film, however, at least in my mind, as I've gotten over the fanboy possessiveness for "Hellblazer" to well and truly embrace the visual majesty of the piece and the absolute "Keanu-ness" of Keanu Reeves's performance. This is…

by Walter ChawOut of the Past (1947)U.S. & Canada: rental onlyJacques Tourneur's Out of the Past is believed by some to be, if not the best, at least the quintessential example of film noir. Screening it for the kids is a wonderful excuse to dig into it. I seized this opportunity to introduce the "big, dumb question" with which I usually inaugurate all of my post-film discussion programs and seminars: "What is this movie about?" We'll return to that after the movie. In introducing Out of the Past, I asked them to remember the previous night's The Night of the…

by Walter ChawSubject to change, here's a list of flicks we'll be screening while quarantined. I'll probably update it in ten-film chunks. I want to be sensitive to what the kids are responding to the most and check and adjust on the fly. If it turns out they just loathe the Italian Neo-Realists, for example, I'll take pains to spread those out more. There's no paucity of great pictures--no reason to force-feed them something if the time isn't right.The films will receive a numerical designation once screened--before they're screened, they'll live in a pool of titles I intend to get…

The Night of the Hunter (1955)U.S. & Canada: rental onlyby Walter ChawThe kids loved this one. The Night of the Hunter is already an indelible part of our pop culture. My children recognized the hand tattoos on star Robert Mitchum from an episode of the "The Simpsons" where Sideshow Bob has "LUV" and "HAT" (with an umlaut over the "A") written on his three-fingered mitts. What I got to explain to them was that the venerable show was aping not only this Mitchum role, but also Mitchum's baddie from the original Cape Fear. I doubt we'll do Cape Fear as…

The Shawshank Redemption U.S.: Netflix Canada: Crave, Hollywood Suite by Walter Chaw Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption came out in 1994. Based on the "Hope Springs Eternal" entry from Stephen King's quartet of novellas Different Seasons (Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption), it was not actually Darabont's first shot at bringing King to the screen. Ten years earlier, he had adapted "The Woman in the Room" from King's short-story collection Night Shift--the first of King's "dollar babies," which saw the author licensing his short fiction to student filmmakers for the bargain price of $1. I introduced The Shawshank Redemption as…

by Walter ChawWith training in British Romanticism, I painted myself darkling into a corner. There are few options outside of starvation for such a background--fortunately, salvation came for me in the form of movies and their analysis. We like to talk about the "seven arts," and I tend to think of cinema as the eighth--the one, like the fourth stop in the cycle of the feminine archetype, that encompasses all the others. Film at its best can be poetry and painting; stagecraft and prose; music, yes; dance, yes; sculpture? Frank Zappa famously said that talking about music was like dancing…

Hey all, we've decided to make available to our patrons reviews that had previously only appeared in print. First up, here's Walter Chaw on Burn After Reading and Changeling, from our 2009 SuperAnnual.-Ed.</em BURN AFTER READING ***½/**** starring George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Brad Pitt written and directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen CHANGELING *½/**** starring Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Jeffrey Donovan, Amy Ryan screenplay by J. Michael Straczynski directed by Clint Eastwood by Walter Chaw Recently revisiting the Coen Bros.' The Big Lebowski on HiDef cable, I saw for the first time that they'd added a prologue…