They Were Expendable

PT boats weren’t very sexy until JFK’s wartime service on one became a big story during the 1960 election. PT duty wasn’t a glamorous assignment in the Navy, though it sure was dangerous. The boats were fast and agile, but they were made out of plywood and it didn’t take many hits from a Japanese vessel or airplane to blow them apart. But the men who served on them believed in them, and ... Read more »

Thicker Than Water

Laurel and Hardy Two-reeler. The henpecked husband was a frequent theme. And why not? Big as Ollie was, he had no real violence in him. For all his bluster he could be bossed around by anyone in the world except poor clueless Stanley, so it makes perfect sense that his wife, about a third his size, terrifies him. Here he has lost the money that should have gone ... Read more »

Thief

It’s not often that I have such radically different takes on a movie as I’ve had on this one. When it was new I thought it was smart, exciting, and visually innovative. I had a good overall impression. And I recall that the whole thing was driven along by a score performed by Tangerine Dream. Now, in 2018, I just could hardly stand the music. In the opening sequence it totally dominates ... Read more »

Thieves Like Us

An interesting history here. It’s based on a novel, but it was made once before, in 1948, as They Live By Night. It was Nicholas Ray’s first picture. Both movies tell the story of Bowie (Farley Granger in the first one, Keith Carradine in the second) and his two partners in crime, Chickama (Howard Da Silva and John Schuck) and T-Dub (Jay C. Flippen and Bert ... Read more »

The Thin Red Line

Terence Malick made two films in the ‘70s: Badlands in 1973, and Days of Heaven in 1978. Both of them were awesomely good. And then he retired from directing. For twenty years. He was writing all that time, but not shooting film. Then he announced that he was going to be making this film, from the novel by James Jones, who also wrote ... Read more »

The Thing

Every once in a while a remake is actually better than the original film. This is one of those cases. While I will still always like The Thing From Another World, made in 1951 (with Gunsmoke’s James Arness in the title role!), this one is much more faithful to the original story. That was “Who Goes There?”, a novella by John W. ... Read more »

The Thing Called Love

Four young hopefuls come to Nashville to try to make it as Country & Western writers and singers. The two guys fall in love with the same girl, Samantha Mathis. I could have enjoyed this more if the music was better. I don’t have anything against C&W, or at least not all of it, but the stuff I like is much different from what we hear here. This movie is notable chiefly because it ... Read more »

Things To Come

Alternate title: 1936: A Space Odyssey. This film must have looked as revolutionary in its day as Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece. There are stunning images that I don’t think any previous science fiction film had even come close to achieving. There are big sets, huge crowds of extras, magnificent glass shots, and a huge amount of very detailed model work. The ... Read more »

Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At her

This odd little movie is not my usual cup of tea, but I found myself drawn in.

Glenn Close is a doctor caring for her extremely old mother. She consults a tarot card reader, Calista Flockhart, who seems to be right on target in her reading of the doctor.

Holly Hunter is a bank manager who becomes fascinated by a crazy shopping cart woman. She finds she is pregnant, gets an ... Read more »

The Third Man

SPOILERS. To my astonishment, about fifteen minutes into this movie I realized that I had never seen it before. I’ve been a film buff since I was twelve, and somehow I had not seen one of the all-time classic movies. And what’s even stranger, I had been sure that I had seen it. What I’ve realized is that I’ve seen certain scenes from The Third ... Read more »