Seven Sinners (1940)
Film review by Dan Willard. Lightweight fare intended as a Marlene Dietrich vehicle. Good cinematography by Rudolph Maté who also shot THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928).
Author: Dan Willard
Cities and Years (1930)
Film review by Dan Willard. Most of Russian director Yevgeni Chervyakov’s films from the twenties have been lost yet he was considered a giant of Soviet cinema by his contemporaries. CITIES AND YEARS is the story of a Russian painter in Berlin during WWI.
Freeze – Die – Come to Life (1990)
Film review by Dan Willard. Set in a bleak Siberian industrial wasteland in 1947, this tale of a harrowing childhood is worth seeing for the stark B&W cinematography alone.
Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
Film review by Dan Willard. Bruce Joel Rubin spent two years in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery before writing the screenplay and considers it a modern interpretation of the TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD.
Hungry for Love (1960)
Film review by Dan Willard. An overlooked product of Italian neorealism about four prostitutes who try to run a restaurant after their brothel is shut down. It examines the attitudes in male dominated societies that restrict women to limited opportunities.
Arise, My Love (1940)
This romantic comedy inspired by a real story is one of a handful of Hollywood films released in 1940 to make a stand against Nazism and urge America to intervene in Europe.
Forbidden Fruit (1921)
Film review by Dan Willard. Cecil B. DeMille remakes his own 1915 film, THE GOLDEN CHANCE, about a seamstress who gets a chance to pretend she’s a member of high society.
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
Film review by Dan Willard. Hilarious sendup of police procedurals written in two days by the brilliant Charles B. Griffith whom Quentin Tarantino cites as of one of his main influences.
The Great Dictator (1940)
Film review by Dan Willard. Charles Chaplin courageously lampoons Hitler in this controversial film which culminates in a speech that is even more relevant today than it was in 1940.
Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921)
Film review by Dan Willard. The story is the type sentimental family fare that you find in a lot of Disney films but the high production values will be of interest to silent film fans.
