|John Costello| Although All Through the Night is primarily a comedy about small-time New York racketeers who become entangled in a spy ring working for the Nazi regime, the slapstick characters take moral positions for community, empathy, and democracy. The movie gives insights… Continue reading
|John Costello| Two-thirds of the way through Casablanca (1942), the action pauses in Rick’s Café Américain to dwell on three minor characters seated at one of the tables. Instead of another scene involving a pickpocket or a musical number advancing the story, the camera lingers on an elderly couple, the Leuchtags. Carl, a waiter… Continue reading
|MH Rowe| Things are not quite as you remember in Casablanca. Consider before anything else the film’s hellish yet also somewhat corny setting. Here we have the city of Casablanca on the coast of Morrocco only days before Pearl Harbor, December 1941. None of the film’s characters know the fateful Japanese Continue reading
|Ryan Sanderson| Rushing Towards Death was the title W.R. Burnett originally wanted for High Sierra, the book that became the movie that made Humphrey Bogart into a movie star (and, more circuitously, John Huston into a director). That first—I would argue more evocative—title came from… Continue reading
|Chris Ryba-Tures| There was a time, a baker’s dozen years back, when I couldn’t find a decent old-fashioned donut on this side of the river to save my life. It was the age of The Glazing—when a number of ambitious, inventive Twin Cities doughsmiths began exploring the possibilities… Continue reading
