Socially Distant, self isolated and sheltered in place.
By the time I began reading The Uncanny X-Men in my adolescence, the team had left behind their teenage years. Cyclops and Jean Grey’s marriage was ending, Wolverine was training … Continue Reading The New Mutants (2020) June 27th, 2021
Strange Confession is an odd addition to the Inner Sanctum Mystery series. It’s missing the melodramatic intrigue and whodunit plot typical of the previous films. No, Strange Confession‘s story is … Continue Reading Strange Confession (1945) May 9th, 2020
A couple of years ago my wife and I began watching the Universal Monsters series because we realized we’d never seen any of them. Not wanting to miss out on … Continue Reading The Mummy’s Curse (1944) April 27th, 2020
70 years before The Avengers regularly broke box-office records for The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Universal Studios had its own cultural juggernaut with the Universal Monsters. Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff … Continue Reading House of Frankenstein (1944) April 26th, 2020
In my last review I brazenly compared The Uninvited to Scooby-Doo, which in retrospect now feels like a challenge too tempting for the cinema gods to ignore. As luck would … Continue Reading One Body Too Many (1944) April 25th, 2020
Coming off the heels of Shadow of a Doubt, Alfred Hitchcock outdoes himself with Lifeboat, the quintessential bottle episode. That’s a TV term and I don’t know of a film … Continue Reading Lifeboat (1944) April 19th, 2020
Originally a radio show, the Inner Sanctum Mysteries jumped to the film medium like a Tales from the Crypt precursor with 6 films starring Lon Chaney Jr. We chose to … Continue Reading Calling Dr. Death (1943) April 19th, 2020
As I write this we’re in the midst of the COVID19 pandemic. Despite calling this blog ‘The Quarantined Critic’ it’s a subject I’ve neglected because it doesn’t often come up … Continue Reading Things to Come (1936) April 15th, 2020
After watching Anatomy of a Murder and comparing it to 12 Angry Men, my wife confessed she’d never seen the duodenary drama. I decided one classic jury movie deserved another … Continue Reading 12 Angry Men (1957) April 10th, 2020
I don’t know what to say about Bottle Rocket. I want to avoid talking about how it’s Wes Anderson’s 24 year old feature film debut. I’d prefer to dodge discussing … Continue Reading Bottle Rocket (1996) April 3rd, 2020
If… is the first film in a trilogy starring Malcom McDowell as Mick Travis. All three films are available on the Criterion Channel until the end of April when they, … Continue Reading If…. (1968) April 1st, 2020
In our house the last couple days of the month means scavenging the Criterion Channel’s scraps. Don’t get me wrong, it’s much more like the moonlit spaghetti dinner in Lady … Continue Reading Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) March 30th, 2020
We strayed from The List today. See, Criterion.com had a 50% off 24 hour flash sale a couple of weeks ago, or months ago, who can tell when sheltering in … Continue Reading Anatomy of a Murder (1959) March 28th, 2020
Yep, we needed a break from Hitchcock. Yep, we did skip ahead in The List… by 52 years, but that doesn’t really break the tenants of the list. As you … Continue Reading Hardcore (1979) March 25th, 2020
I made a big stink about not wanting to watch more Hitchcock in the previous post, but this is how The List works. It’s difficult for me to enjoy a … Continue Reading Downhill (1927) March 24th, 2020
John Conner and I share a birthday. Sure he’s a couple years older than me but I’ve clung to it because there’s really no one cooler born that day. Back … Continue Reading The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) March 23rd, 2020
Quarantined Critic 