Most courtroom movies feel it necessary to end with a clear-cut verdict. But 12 Angry Men never states whether the defendant is innocent or guilty. It is about whether the jury has a reasonable doubt about his guilt.
The movie has, above all, effortless charm. Once we catch on that nothing much is going to happen, we can relax and share the amusement of the actors, who are essentially being asked to share their playfulness.
Another of Keaton’s strategies was to avoid anticipation. Instead of showing you what was about to happen, he showed you what was happening; the surprise and the response are both unexpected, and funnier. He also gets laughs by the application of perfect logic.
In literature, it’s called plagiarism. In the movies, it’s homage.
The movies that last, the ones we return to, don’t always have lofty themes or Byzantine complexities. Sometimes they last because they are arrows straight to the heart.
The Toys of a Lifetime.
Their costumes look purchased from the Goodwill store on Tatoine.
Some movies run off the rails. This one is like the train crash in The Fugitive.
Siskel’s classic question, “Is this movie better than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?
Strange that movies about Satan always require Catholics. You never see your Presbyterians or Episcopalians hurling down demons.
Fate is not merely knocking on the door, it has entered with a SWAT team and is banging their heads together and administering poppers.
Neither the mob nor Vegas could exist if most people weren’t optimists.
Unlike modern films where superstars dominate every scene, the Hollywood films of the golden era have depth in writing and casting, so the story can resonate with more than one tone.
You look at them and wonder how, at any stage of the production, anyone could have thought there was a watchable movie here.
Is she killing these guys in a blackout? Wasn’t it Ann Landers who said that’s one of the twenty danger signals of alcoholism?
He was an editor for seven years before directing his first film, and his career stands as an argument for the theory that editors make better directors than cine-matographers do; the cinematographer is seduced by the look of a film, while the editor is faced with the task of making it work as a story.
Fallacy of the Talking Killer. The villain wants to kill the hero. He has him cornered at gunpoint. All he has to do is pull the trigger. But he always talks first. He explains the hero’s mistakes to him. Jeers. Laughs. And gives the hero time to think his way out of the situation, or be rescued by his buddy. Cf. most James Bond movies.
The world of French crime films is a particular place, informed by the French love for Hollywood film noir, a genre they identified and named. But the great French noirs of the 1950s are not copies of Hollywood; instead, they have a particularly French flavor.
Fast Food Rule. Wanna know what the summer’s blockbuster is going to be? See who McDonald’s does the marketing tie-in with. Wanna know what blockbuster will do disappointing business? See who Burger King ties in with.
It is a truism that Hollywood trailers advertise not the movie that has been made, but the movie that the studio wishes had been made.
Inside every sadist is a masochist, cringing to taste his own medicine.