James Dean's Harrowing Lead Performance Anchors the Haunting Rebel Without a Cause

All these years later, the ripple effects of Rebel Without a Cause are still reverberating throughout pop culture. Nicholas Ray's 1955 movie is one of those features whose influence on cinema as a whole really can't be overstated. Whether it's the costume worn by protagonist Jim Stark (James Dean), certain lines of dialogue, or just the way Stewart Stern's screenplay depicted teenage angst, Rebel Without a Cause is still influencing our world in 2020. Having finally watched it for the first time, it's not hard to see why. Rebel Without a Cause doesn't feel like a relic from a bygone era, it still feels as fresh and relevant as ever.

I Live In Fear Is A Brutal Rumination on Inescapable Paranoia

In I Live in Fear, the past doesn't just have an ominous presence, it practically blankets the proceedings. The horrors that atomic warfare have unleashed on Japan inform the tormented psychological state of the protagonist of this 1955 Akira Kurosawa motion picture.  That protagonist is middle-aged man Kiichi Nakajima (Toshiro Mifune), whose immense level of anxiety over the prospect of further atomic bombs coming alone and further damaging his world are what instill in him paranoia over making sure he's protected from any further bombings. At first, such paranoia leads him to merely build out a huge bomb shelter, but eventually, he concocts a scheme to travel to what he deems the only safe place on the planet: Brazil.

To Catch a Thief Delivers Charming & Easygoing Caper Antics

Alfred Hitchcock is well-known for delivering movies that chill you to the bone. Sequences in his filmography like the shower scene in Psycho, for instance, are iconic for their power of utterly terrifying viewers. This makes his 1955 motion picture To Catch a Thief an interesting oddity in his catalog of work. What we have here is a feature that has brief flashes of being a thriller but primarily prides itself on being an easygoing romantic heist movie. Yes, I said easygoing. That's not a word you'd normally associate with the works of Hitchcock, which typically are extremely intense pieces of cinema. Like I said, To Catch a Thief is an interesting oddity in Hitchcock's resume.

The Night of the Hunter Is A Top-Shelf Visually Gorgeous Thriller

God, I love how vast cinema is. There's just so many movies out there that it's impossible to know everything that's ever existed which leaves one open to the delightful experience of discovering something wholly new. Just like last year when I had my mind blown upon discovering Ranier Wener Fassbinder, I was shocked yesterday to discover people raving about a film leaving the Criterion Channel on July 31st known as The Night of the Hunter. With time running out to stream it on this streaming platform, I decided to watch it this morning and once again, that wonderful experience of discovering something special transpired.

Kiss Me Deadly Is A Fascinating Reflection of 1955 American Society

By the time Kiss Me Deadly was released in May 1955, audiences were ready for a slightly new approach to the beloved film noir genre. A staple of 1940's American cinema, film noirs continued to get made well into the 1950s and beyond, but like any genre that endures throughout numerous decades, it had to also evolve along the way. For Kiss Me Deadly, a directorial effort from Robert Aldrich, this meant embracing a slightly darker tone than the already grim aesthetic of conventional film noirs. Though the restrictions of the Hayes Code meant that Kiss Me Deadly couldn't get too grim, the feature would still have a bit more edge and teeth than audiences in this era might have been expecting.

La Pointe Courte Was A Subtly Ambitious And High-Quality Inaugural Directorial Effort For Agnes Varda

While many films detailing a couple going through turmoil in their relationship may depict such upheaval in grandiose ways, like things being flung across the room or large speeches, acclaimed director Agnes Varda went in a different direction. For her very first time directing a feature film, Varda filmed a portrait of quiet romantic agony, one where two people engage in intimate conversations that have them forced to confront where their relationship now stands. The Honeymoon is over, as they say, and it's time for the two lead characters of La Pointe Courte to figure out where exactly they go from here.

Ernest Borgnine And Betsy Blair Provide Heartwarming Romantic Cinema With Marty

For my generation (read: anyone born after 1990), Ernest Borgnine is likely most recognizable for his work on SpongeBob SquarePants as Mermaid Man, a geriatric superhero the lead characters of that show adore. Borgnine did some terrifically humorous vocal work on that show as he fought the forces of E.V.I.L., so it's no wonder that he's so well-known for that role, but that was far from Borgnine's only work as an actor. The guy was working steadily as an actor from 1951 all the way up to the year of his death, 2012. His first major leading role in a motion picture, and perhaps his most iconic performance of all, came in the 1955 Best Picture winner Marty.

Annabelle: Creation Is A Better Than Expected Fright-Fest

Though I've seen the two Conjuring movies, the original Annabelle from October 2014 is something my eyeballs have not witnessed, mostly because I heard only bad things about it and I wasn't as open to seeing horror fare on a regular basis theatrically as I am just three years later. As for the former detail, both film critics and audiences alike seemed to just not give much of a hoot about the movie once they saw it and if the director of Annabelle's follow-up feature Wish Upon is any indication of the quality seen there, well, I can understand the disdain. For the prequel Annabelle: Creation, director David F. Sandberg (director of Lights Out) is now at the helm and hey! Whaddya know, the movies actually some solid scary stuff!

The Way We Approach Christianity Makes Up The Core Of The Magnificent Ordet

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #24
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #19

One of the best parts about going through all these Sight & Sound 50 Greatest Films titles is discovering so many great movies centered around theology. I'm a proud Christian but I've been dismayed that thought-provoking modern-day Christian movies are few and far in between (though Noah and Silence do prove they can exist!). But going through all these movies has allowed me to discover a number of faith-oriented movies I would have likely taken forever to discover otherwise, one's that blow the likes of God's Not Dead and War Room out of the water and then some. As you likely suspect by now, one such film is the 1995 Carl Theodore Dryer movie Ordet.