Citizen Dame

This week we grapple with the problematics of Chinatown (1974), arguably one of the greatest neo-noirs, with a fraught and complicated history thanks to its director, Roman Polanski. Starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, Chinatown represents the bleakness of noir amid the sunniness of LA, with a hefty dose of political and sexual corruption. Oof.

TW for discussions of sexual assault and incest. Next week, we conclude ...

We continue our look at Los Angeles-set neo-noir films, this time with the 1997 Academy Award-winning L.A. Confidential.

Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, and Kevin Spacey star as three very different LAPD detectives in a changing city where some cops embrace the corruption, some look the other way, and some are determined to root it out. An investigation into a series of murders in 1950s Los Angeles threatens to expose what's really goin...

The Dames are back with Halloween hangovers and the start of Noirvember! This month, we're looking at neo-noirs set in 40s/50s LA. We begin with Devil in a Blue Dress, starring peak Denzel Washington as Easy Rawlins, an out-of-work machinist who gets caught up in the search for a missing woman, leading him into the seedy underworld and racist high society of the City of Angels.

Next week, we'll go into even more sun-soaked...

It's Halloween week! And what better way to celebrate than with the ultimate spooky movie season movie: HALLOWEEN! John Carpenter and Debra Hill's 1978 slasher is a must for fans of the season. But we only recognize the original as the One True Halloween movie. Jamie Lee Curtis stars as Laurie Strode, a 17-year-old babysitter whose night is ruined by 21-year-old mask-wearing, knife-wielding hospital escapee Michael Myers.

Happy Hal...

Spooky Season starts in earnest, and we're kicking it off with a movie that scared the hell out of four-year-old Lauren: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Comedy team Abbott and Costello play baggage handlers who run into a bevy of Universal Monsters including Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi), the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney, Jr.), and the Frankenstein Monster (Glenn Strange), in a creepy castle in...Florida? The film would go on...

This week, we're finishing up our first Cary Grant series AND welcoming Spooky Movie Season at the same time with the 1944 comedy, Arsenic and Old Lace. Adapted from the hit Broadway play, Frank Capra's classic was originally slated for release in 1942, but the stage production was such a big hit that the film was delayed two extra years.

Grant stars as Mortimer Brewer, a playwright and confirmed bachelor who surprises even himself...

Get ready to cry! This week, we're discussing An Affair to Remember, director Leo McCarey's 1957 remake of his own film Love Affair, this time featuring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. Come for the mature love story, stay for the soap-operatic melodrama. It's the ultimate chick flick, but you will be sobbing by the end.

We also chat a bit about the current state of media and what the Hollywood Blacklist has to do with our con...

Cary Grant month continues as we discuss THE quintessential screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby. Howard Hawks directed the 1938 film which stars Cary Grant as engaged paleontologist David Huxley, who is trying to score a one million dollar grant for his museum when he crosses paths with Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn), a wonderfully chaotic disruption to his plans. From a missing intercostal clavicle to a leopard named Baby (played ...

Happy September! It's Cary Grant month (because we say it is), so we're starting out with Suspicion, the first film that brought together Grant and Alfred Hitchcock. They would go on to work together on three more films, but Suspicion is probably the most contentious for casting Cary Grant as a maybe-murderer who falls under suspicion from his wife (Joan Fontaine, who won an Oscar for her portrayal).

Next week, we'll be discussing ...

We conclude this Hitchcockian August with the 1967 film, Wait Until Dark. Audrey Hepburn was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Suzy, a woman blinded in an accident who finds herself the accidental target of dangerous drug traffickers, one of whom is a particularly deadly menace. Directed by Terrence Young and based on Frederick Knott's 1966 play, the film also stars Samantha Jones, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna, Jack West...

Our Hitchcockian August continues with Michael Powell's 1960 film, Peeping Tom. Credited as one of the films that influenced the slasher genre, Powell's film tells the story of Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Böhm), a lonely London photographer who murders women, capturing their fear on film in hopes of creating his own documentary.

Creepy, macabre, and bold, Powell's film was not well received upon its release in 1960, but has won over horr...

This week, we talk about the meaning of "gaslighting" with the film that originated the term: George Cukor's 1944 film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman as a woman slowly driven to the brink of madness by her abusive husband (Charles Boyer). This film also featured the cinematic debut (and first Oscar nod!) for Angela Lansbury, who turned 18 during filming.

TW for discussions of domestic abuse and abusive relationships.

N...

We close out Pride Month this year with a brand-new film (that's technically a remake, but shhhh): The Wedding Banquet, from Fire Island director Andrew Ahn, and starring Bowen Yang, Han Gi-chan, Lily Gladstone, and Kelly Marie Tran as two gay couples who have to try to play it straight. The result is a beautiful (and hilarious) film about found family and queer identity.

We'll be on a break for the rest of July, returning in Augus...