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‘The Strange Love of Martha Ivers’ is a demonstration of why melodrama is not an inherently bad thing

The Strange Lives of Martha Ivers might feel familiar in many ways, but it succeeds in carving its own special place in noir lore. Starring a bevy of actors that made names for themselves in the lauded film movement, Milestone’s picture embraces the melodrama inherent in the script, tapping into the core of the quartet of central characters. Martha’s love is indeed strange, but the word that comes to mind to describe her movie is ‘great’.

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Protecting Their Precious Bodily Fluids: Male Impotence in Kubrick’s Filmography

It’s both perfectly fitting and a darkly wry punchline that the last word in Stanley Kubrick’s last film is “fuck,” utilized in its most literal definition. The word is spoken, in both direct and slightly imploring fashion, by Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman) to her husband Bill (Tom Cruise) at the end of the still slightly …

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‘Out of the Past’ is exceptionally gripping from start to finish

Out of the Past Written by Daniel Mainwaring Directed by Jacques Tourneur U.S.A., 1947 Sometimes, there is no eluding one’s past, regardless of how hard one tries. The reasons are numerous. Perhaps the emotional and psychological weight of an event in one’s life are too great to shake off. In other instances the shackles exist …

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‘Out of the Past,’ asks whether a man can escape his future

Out of the Past  Directed by Jacques Tourneur Written by Daniel Mainwaring Starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas USA, 97 min – 1947. “I never saw her in the daytime. We seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoked. I didn’t …

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Making Of The West: Mythmakers and truth-tellers

The “adult” Western – as it would come to be called –  was a long time coming.  A Hollywood staple since the days of The Great Train Robbery (1903), the Western offered spectacle and action set against the uniquely American milieu of the Old West – a historical period which, at the dawn of the motion picture …

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