Foster on Film

Edward G. Robinson was one of the kings of early gangster cinema (along with Jimmy Cagney, George Raft, and their second banana, Humphrey Bogart).Things changed in a decade, with old-style crime movies fading, replaced by war movies and Film Noir, and elevating Bogart over the other three. But most of Robinson’s best films came after

No man has personified a film genre like Errol Flynn. He is the icon of Swashbuckling. He was rarely acclaimed for his acting, which is unfortunate. He may have been limited both in his abilities and in his opportunities, but given the right part, no one was better. Who else could wear tights and project

Mad Scientists. You have to love them. I do. Where would our monsters come from without them? For my reviews of Mad Doctor/Scientist films, check out my full list here. This is a horror list, so I’m trying to stick to that arbitrary line. That means I won’t be counting any of the myriad evil

I ranked the Bond title sequences, and this is an addendum to that. I grant myself some knowledge of film so that ranking has some minimal meaning. This is just how much I like the songs. I claim nothing more than that. I’m ranking only the main title themes from both the EON and non-EON

Yeah, I know. No one needed this any more than they needed my list of Top 10 Kate Bush songs. But here it is anyway. A few thoughts first. I think of art rock—as opposed to the larger category of prog rock—as a fusion of styles. It is rock and classical, with a touch of jazz

This is a ranking of the seasons of modern Doctor Who, from 2005 (or NuWHO). I’ll get around do ranking the seasons of Classic Who, but that’s for a different post. I’m looking at the seasons as a whole, so while that mostly means, “were the episodes in it better or worse?”, the structure of

This one is by request. Now Charlton Heston is not your typical actor. It isn’t that he is bad, but rather that he is limited, and works best where a very stylized performance is called for. If you are running a tent revival meeting, he is your man. Sometimes, an actor needs to speak to

I think of Rex Harrison as one of the great actors, yet “great” is not a word I use with his most famous films. Doctor Dolittle, Anna and the King of Siam, The Agony and the Ecstasy, The Yellow Rolls-Royce, and Cleopatra are all fine, watchable flicks, but no masterpieces, and I normally don’t even

O’Hara was a young stage beauty when Charles Laughton became captivated by her eyes, put her under contract, and changed her name to O’Hara. While starting off her film career as a maiden in distress and a gypsy girl, she is best known for a stream of Swashbucklers. In each she played a “fiery” red

90s horror has a bad reputation, remembered as made up of fading franchises and the bloom of self-award/meta horror, that seemed so clever at first, but most people find irritating now. And yes, there is truth in that reputation. Notice how many on my list have numbers after their title. Originality was hard to find.

My bio for Michael Powell is a bit longer then usual as people who don’t breath cinema don’t seem to know him. Powell has been called the greatest British director by those more knowledgeable than I, and I wouldn’t argue the point. His films wrap me into other realities. More than any other director on

No one asked for this, and I can’t think of why anyone would care, but I felt like it, so here you go. Kate Bush is one of the great musical artists of the last ’50 years. She takes chances and when she gets it right, damn she’s good. While she has a lot of