by Frank Olson

​American B-movies have a long and distinguished history of smuggling subversive sociopolitical commentary into crowd-pleasingly tawdry scenarios. Eagle-eyed viewers can get an extra level of enjoyment out of certain cult classics by, for example, following the homoerotic subtext of The Bride of Frankenstein or taking note of the various ways that Night of the Living Dead reflects the turmoil of its time. They Live upends the usual priorities of the politically-minded midnight movie. Rather than hiding its criticisms of ‘80s social values, the film’s plot literally revolves around exposing the subtextual messages that reinforce the prevailing ideologies of our culture. 

by Frank Olson

​There are few films as propulsive as Gun Crazy, Joseph H. Lewis’ delightfully gritty take on the classic “criminal lovers on the run” story. Every plot point, every line of dialogue, and every shot has been sculpted and sharpened for maximum efficiency and gut-level impact. Lewis and his creative team transform a generic outlaws on the lam plot into a live action flipbook of the seediest pulp novel covers.

by Frank Olson

​No one did more to define and redefine the traditional cinematic Western than John Ford. With his 1939 breakthrough Stagecoach, Ford made what could be considered the prototypical Western and helped establish John Wayne as the genre’s archetypal hero. The director’s subsequent work in the genre poked and prodded at the tropes and mores that he played such a strong role in creating. Ford was at the forefront of every stylistic change and technical breakthrough in the classical Western during its late ‘30s to early ‘60s heyday. With The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Ford read his favorite genre its last rights. 

by Frank Olson

Though he first came to prominence with 1970’s glibly populist M*A*S*H, it was with the following year’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller that Robert Altman first demonstrated the breadth of his talent. This off-kilter Western kicked off a hot streak that included such gems as The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, and Nashville, none of which are as consistently dryly funny or as poetically haunting as McCabe. The film is often referred to as a “revisionist” or “anti” Western, but while it undeniably approaches the genre from a non-traditional perspective, there is no need for qualifiers. McCabe & Mrs. Miller is, by any standard, one of the finest achievements in the Western genre.

by Frank Olson

Ever since 1973, when Elliott Gould’s shaggy private eye strutted insouciantly through Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, Hollywood has shown a periodic fascination with the collision of ‘60s counterculture and the corrupt nighttime world of noir. It’s easy to root for the idealistic little guy railing against the cynical and shadowy establishment, and it’s hard not to identify with and get swept up in the protagonists’ struggle as they get swallowed up in a web of deceit that they can barely comprehend. This fruitful dynamic has powered films as distinct as the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski, Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. The most profound and elegant variation on this story is found in Cutter’s Way, Ivan Passer’s touching look at several beautiful losers surviving in a world that no longer has a place for them.

by Frank Olson

One of the most prevalent misconceptions about Orson Welles is that he spent the majority of his cinematic career trying to recapture the glory of his masterful debut Citizen Kane. While Kane is certainly one of the boldest and most impressive (if not the boldest and most impressive) first efforts in the history of the medium, it isn’t the only Welles film that qualifies as essential viewing, nor did it provide the model for any of Welles’ subsequent efforts. Though Welles only managed to direct about a dozen complete features in his career, his is one of the most eclectic and stylistically varied filmographies on record. Studio interference and persistent financial issues prevented the actor-writer-director from accomplishing all that he could have in the movies – and an argument could certainly be made that he made a bigger impact in radio and theatre than in motion pictures – but in a way these roadblocks only make what Welles did achieve even more impressive. Perhaps no project better illustrates the ability of Welles’ artistry to shine through unfortunate production circumstances than his second film, The Magnificent Ambersons. Though famously compromised by RKO Studios, Ambersons holds up as one of cinema’s most elegant and profound tragedies.

by Frank Olson

When Dead Man arrived in the mid-90s (first at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, and then in a limited theatrical release the following year) it was received with befuddlement. In his damning one-and-a-half star pan for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert summed up the naysayers’ point of view when he wrote that writer-director Jim Jarmusch was “clearly trying to get at something…and I don’t have a clue what it is.” Viewed today, Jarmusch’s sixth feature feels poetic, visionary, and profound, a unique masterpiece that may be the very best film released in its decade.

by Frank Olson

There has never been (and will never again be) a science fiction film as influential as Metropolis. It isn’t the first film in the genre—a great deal of Georges Méliès’ movies, including his signature piece A Trip to the Moon, qualify. But where Méliès’ early 1900s shorts are charmingly quaint, Fritz Lang’s unwieldy 1927 epic still feels staggeringly modern in many respects, and its DNA is all over dystopian fantasies as different as Blade Runner and Brazil. Regardless of how technologically advanced the special effects in the later films have become, no cinematic visions of the future have been able to fully hide Metropolis’ inspiration. With the possible exception of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (which was itself likely inspired by Lang’s film) there is no piece of pop culture that has inspired humanity’s collective vision of the future as strongly as Metropolis has.

Trylon microcinema
July 18-20

Director: Fritz Lang
Producer: Erich Pommer
Writer: Thea von Harbou
Cinematographers: Karl Freund, Günther Rittau, Walter Ruttmann
Music: Gottfried Huppertz (original score)
Cast: Alfred Abel, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Fritz Rasp, Theodor Loos, Erwin Biswanger, Heinrich George, Brigitte Helm

Runtime: 153m.
Genre: Drama/Sci-Fi
Country: Germany
US Theatrical Release: March 13, 1927
US Distributor: Paramount Pictures  
  

by Frank Olson

Kind Hearts and Coronets is a dark comedy that is equally erudite and nasty. Angry and class conscious as only a British film can be, the film’s humor comes from the way that its emotions are barely suppressed by its regal, stiff upper lip refinement. Like Charlie Chaplin’s contemporaneous Monsieur Verdoux, Kind Hearts elides most of the actual violence of its gentlemanly killer anti-hero in a way that suggests that politely efficient murder is more vicious than brute force. The audience is invited to share in the protagonist’s lust for vengeance but also made to reckon with the consequences of his actions. Our hero may be wittier than his victims, but the film never lets us forget that we're rooting for a murderer whose attitude is often as snobbishly callous as those of his upper-class victims.

by Frank Olson

Alfred Hitchcock was on an incredible creative winning streak from 1951 through 1960, a period bookended by the masterful Strangers on a Train and Psycho. In the midst of continually justifying his “Master of Suspense” moniker with a number of the genre’s all-time classics (Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest) Hitchcock also made several equally interesting (if less commercially successful) films which challenged preconceptions about his trademark style while still adhering to his familiar thematic concerns. Perhaps the most offbeat and overlooked of these films is The Trouble with Harry, a small-town comedy that feels remarkably light on its feet despite its morbid scenario.