Mo' Thrills Lead To Mo' Problems In Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious

There's a reason Alfred Hitchcock's become known as "The Master of Suspense" but it'd be disingenuous to believe that he only worked on horror fare like Psycho and The Birds in his career. Just as John Ford didn't just do Westerns or Martin Scorsese hasn't done solely gangster movies, Hitchcock also had more variety in terms of the genres he explored than one might expect. For instance, he was very well-versed in the world of spy thrillers, most notably in his movies like North By Northwest and the subject of this review, Notorious, a 1946 feature film that paired the director with a trio of legendary 1940's actors; Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains!

Journey To Italy Is A Quietly Tragic Romantic Drama NOT A Concert Movie About Journey Performing In Italy As I Thought

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #31
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #12

We have plenty of movies about people falling in love, with the subgenre thriving because of people of all genders getting to live vicariously through the characters on-screen engaging in a perfect romance they know can't possibly exist in the real world. There's plenty of those movies I like but I also tend to gravitate heavily towards movies with more realistic depictions of romance, specifically, one's that show people in either romantic partnerships or marriages that are crumbling and how that deteriorating relationship affects both people. That's why Richard Linklater's Before Midnight is so excellent, among many many other reasons!

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.