The Excellent African Queen Makes Phenomenal Use of Its Two Exceptional Lead Actors

Akin to my experience with watching Casablanca for the first time two years ago, I realized just as The African Queen began that I was unfamiliar with the specific plot of this highly regarded 1951 motion picture. As it turns out, the story concerns missionary Rose Sayer (Katharine Hepburn), who, while being situated in East Africa, loses everything, including her brother, to the hands of destructive German forces. World War I has begun and all that Rose holds dear has become one of the early casualties of this conflict. Seeking revenge on those who destroyed her life, Rose procures the help of Charlie Allnut (Humphery Bogart) and his boat The African Queen for mission to destroy a ship that proves crucial to enemy forces.

Fritz Lang's M Harrowingly Shows A Society In Chaos In The Face of Daunting Tragedy

Some movies are declared to be character studies, but Fritz Lang's 1931 feature M strikes me more as a larger-scale societal study. Though individual characters are found throughout the story, M is more concerned with examining how individual large pockets of society react to the prospect of terror occuring in their midst rather than just focusing on how one person reacts to such horrifying circumstances. Specifically, those horrifying circumstances are that someone in the city of Berlin, Germany is kidnapping and killing children. This is a tragedy that sends all of the residents of Berlin, Germany into a frenzy as they try to figure out who exactly could be behind such vicious slayings, with the police officers and the criminal syndicates of this town each having their own agendas in wanting to bring this killer to justice.

A Movie As Well-Made As The Passionate Friends Has Got A Friend In Me

To quote Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (which itself was quoting a passage from the book The Natural History of Nonsense): "We might be through with the past but the past ain't through with us." That's true under any circumstances but it's especially true in regards to the lead characters of The Passionate Friends, who are all entangled in how Mary (Ann Todd) is becoming heavily infatuated with a figure from her past much to the detriment of her present circumstances. Even when seemingly important people and events fade into the best, they can still manage to be impactful well into the present.

Casablanca Review (Classic Write-Up)

An interesting thought occurred to me as I started to watch Casablanca for the first time; I had no idea what this classic motion picture was actually about. Oh, I'd obviously heard of Casablanca, as well as the large amount of quotes from the film seared into pop culture eternally ("Here's looking at you, kid", "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow..."., etc.), but as for the actual plot of the film? For some reason that evaded me until this very special viewing.