Eephus (Carson Lund, 2025): 4/5
For my money, one of the two or three best baseball movies. A poetic and shaggy hang-out comedy, with ample meditation on time and death—Tyler Taormina plus Linklater. Feels 15 minutes too long, but that’s consistent with the movie’s themes.
The Rehearsal, Season 2 (Nathan Fielder, 2025): 4.5/5
Takes “overly elaborate” to dizzying heights. Amazing to watch Fielder try to get outside of his own life to look back inside it as an observer. This desire is probably at the root of all fiction, but it takes a genius to make this autistic disassociation the subject of a show. The Sully episode, with its use of puppets and people on stilts to recreate breast-feeding and the feeling of looking up at your parents when you were in your crib: a million chef’s kisses.
Warfare (Ray Mendoza, Alex Garland, 2025): 3.5/5
The feel-bad body-horror movie of the year, but at 86 minutes, anything is permitted. A total lack of context really gives it a “Huh, this just seems to be what humans do * shrug *” quality, in a blankly profound way.
* Thunderbolts* (Jake Schreier, 2025): 3.5/5
Not exactly wall-to-wall action but entertaining throughout due to good characters and dialogue. Pugh nails it, and Jack and I agreed that she rules.
My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (Mark Cousins, 2022): 3.5/5
Fun film crit on AH’s themes and visual motifs, but long. Curious use of a fake Hitchcock voiceover.
* Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025): 2/5
Overlong and emotionally overwrought, with unoriginal story and imagery. The ‘conjuring spirits’ musical sequence I have heard called one of the best of the year gave me nothing but douche chills. Why twins? And if you’re a black filmmaker remaking a movie and coaxing out its underlying racial themes, why pick on a movie (From Dusk Until Dawn) directed by and starring Mexican people?
Drop (Christopher Landon, 2025): 1/5
Modern cinema is increasingly a matter of looking at a screen showing people looking at screens. An idiotically contrived premise that the movie doesn’t seem to have any idea how to exploit for drama. Sometimes it’s nice to reset the old movie-quality yardstick.
Dating Amber (David Freyne, 2020): 3.5/5
A funny and sweet story about two gay kids banding together to survive high school in a tiny Scottish town. Reminded me of Sing Street (highest compliment).
Twenty Years Later (Eduardo Coutinho, 1984): 2/5
In 1962, the peasants in Northeastern Brazil attempted to come together in a union to fight for better wages and working conditions, and of course the leaders were gunned down in the street. Terrible, but this could have been an email.
Mother Hummingbird (Julien Duvivier, 1929): 4/5
A mother of two falls in love for the first time, with a younger man. After an amazingly ecstatic 45 minutes of falling in love involving a long and exuberant party scene, reality sets in. Very empathetic and vivid, told in long sequences with no intertitles. Pure cinema. Romantic, poetic, and finally tragic.
Ladies’ Paradise (Julien Duviver, 1930): 4/5
Filled with startling mise en scène, new here and never repeated. Multiple superimpositions. Faces in rictuses of the most extreme emotions. Rapid montage. Intrusive flashback images as psychological states. Plotwise, it’s like You’ve Got Mail if Meg Ryan (finally) runs across the street and shoots Tom Hanks in the heart. Culminates in a mass shooting at an ultra-modern French department store, followed by an old man being dragged under a delivery truck.
La tête d’un homme (Julien Duvivier, 1933): 4/5
A polite and witty French police investigation is disrupted halfway through by a Dostoyevsky-like, Nietzschian, above-the-law , Pickpocket type killer who shatters the mise en scène pretty radically. Open to shagginess, unpredictable beauty, and sexual frankness. Subverts a Maigret/Holmes cleverness: they figure everything out but what does it all mean?
Humphrey Bogart Film Fest
Raymond Chandler supposedly said Bogart was the right person to play Philip Marlowe because 'He looks tough without a gun in his hand.” And it is true that he plays a great rictus-fingered, face-twitching psycho, without or without a gun, especially in the earlier Warner Brothers movies. But the real measure of Bogart’s persona is that he could be tough while also being soft (They Drive by Night, High Sierra) or pathetic (Dead End, Black Legion, The Caine Mutiny). Bogart made 7 films with Curtiz, 6 with Huston, 5 with Walsh, 3 with Hawks, and 2 with Wyler.
Petrified Forest (Archie Mayo, 1936): 3.5/5
An emotionally rich adaptation on a hit play, with florid and romantic dialogue, starring this same cast. Bette Davis is (uncharacteristically) sweet, and Bogart is startling and intense. His performance is Kabuki: formally posed and full of striking stillness.
Dead End (William Wyler, 1937): 3.5/5
Based on a hit play and completely set on an enormous, three-story set including a pool representing the East River. This is a pretty gentle portrait of a neighbor on the East Side of Manhattan, contrasting social strata. The large cast of characters includes The Dead End Kids (who were also actors in the play), a romantic triangle with college-educated but unemployed Joel McCrae and heavenly eyed Sylvia Sidney, and Humphrey Bogart as a gangster returning for a visit to the old neighborhood. Bogart to McCrae: “Six years you work in a college and all you get is handouts. I’m glad I’m not like you saps. I got mine. I took it.” One of seven movies Bogart made in 1937—studio system, man… Here Bogart is feral and twitchy—a violence that must be eliminated for the neighborhood society to continue.
Black Legion (Archie Mayo, 1937): 3/5
Bogart is passed up for promotion at his factory and is recruited into a group of nice men who tell him it’s all the foreigners’ fault (here meaning the Italians and Irish)—a science fiction story that could never happen in real life! Beatings, floggings and house-burning ensues, although since they’re wearing white robes and hoods, we are denied the pleasure of seeing Bogart perform these heinous acts himself. The last act is devoted to Bogart trying to extradite himself from the group after becoming disillusioned. Another one of seven movies Bogart made in 1937. Here Bogart is weak and afraid, and any violence he demonstrates is utterly shameful.
Dark Victory (Edmund Goulding, 1939): 3/5
A classic weepy where Betty Davis learns that she must meet death “beautifully and finely.” Bogart reunites with Bette Davis (after The Petrified Forest, Marked Woman and Kid Galahad) as her horse groomsman with an occasional Irish accent—a nothing role.
The Roaring Twenties (Raoul Walsh, 1939): 3.5/5
Quite a broad emotional tapestry, for a gangster movie. It has a romantic triangle, three war buddies with shifting loyalties, three nightclub-set songs and a dance. Cagney is a cocksure businessman, but Bogart is a killer on edge—lips drawn back with occasional ticks, not of a tough guy but of a neuralgic. The film’s 20-minute denouement (where Cagney falls, becomes a drunk and earns redemption) is great argument for a more feral and abrupt gun-down.
They Drive by Night (Raoul Walsh, 1940): 3.5/5
The first half is an engaging, human-sized, and action-packed melodrama that feels like one of Hawks’ “competent men (and a girl) at work” films. See the truck go off the road, down the incline and flip over (including a brief shot of body’s writhing in flame)! Unfortunately, when Ida Lupino shows up as (characteristically) the most bitter woman on earth, her self-destruction and insanity completely changes the tone of the entire set-bound back half of the movie. (As in real life), Bogart is the more sensitive and complex younger brother of George Raft.
High Sierra, rw (Raoul Walsh, 1941): 4/5
Ida Lupino is top-billed and the story IS increasingly told from her point of view. Bogart is sprung from prison by a kindly mob boss and is assigned to rob a hotel. Sets a template for what makes Bogart so special: he’s tough enough to kick anyone’s ass but also sensitive and clever. Here is a gangster with an affinity for nature and a heart of gold—shamelessly expressed through love with a handicapped girl, then Ida Lupino, as well as a dern cute dog. And it’s true, the woman, girl and dog do make his fate more emotional.
Sahara (Zoltan Korda, 1943): 3/5
An action-packed yet grim desert warfare film that pits a ragtag, international band of nine men against a battalion of 500 thirsty Germans. Bogart—on loan from Warner Brothers to Columbia—is a down and dirty yet empathetic leader despite his better judgement and someone who can be counted on to do the right thing against great odds.
The Big Sleep, rw (Howard Hawks, 1946): 4.5/5
Bogart couldn’t be more relaxed and in charge, and each scene is a great pleasure to watch. Bacall is also perfect, and the scenes of them together are movie magic. “[Into the phone] Oh, YOU’RE the police.” “[To Bacall] Oh, he's the police.””[Back on the phone] “Oh well that's different."
Dead Reconning (John Cromwell, 1946): 3/5
A baroque noir detective story with ex-paratrooper Bogart, freshly back from the war, investigating the sudden death of his paratrooper buddy. Chock full of hardboiled voiceover. Femme fatale Lizabeth Scott is a handsome and husky-voiced Lauren Bacall type, but blonde and more inert. At one point she urges Bogart to give her a nickname, and so he calls her “Mike” throughout (!?). He also tells her, “I loved you, but I loved him [the paratrooper buddy] more.” Here Bogart seems to be open to romance but (correctly) has trust issues (and perhaps prefers guys?). He can’t be duped, really, and is a beat-up justice incarnate.
Knock on Any Door (Nicolas Ray, 1949): 2.5/5
Ray manages to smuggle some perversity into a handwringing youth-gone-astray courtroom melodrama, including overt homoeroticism in gang wrestling/fights as well as in some kiss-close conversations between Bogart and Derek. Features a very early-Method, James Dean-ish performance from John Derek, who says stuff like, “Nobody knows how anyone feels.” Bogart plays the overly earnest lawyer (!)
The Caine Mutiny (Edward Dmytryk, 1954): 2/5
I knew that we were in deep trouble when I saw this was “made with the full participation of the U.S. Navy, so we can use all the neato boats.” And indeed this is bloated with patriotic Navy baloney, light comedy, terribly dull naval battle footage, and a stiff as a protagonist. For the audience, Bogart’s crazy is welcome! Compared to the similar Mutiny on the Bounty, the stakes they are rebelling against are miniscule (no movies and frozen strawberries. Boo hoo!) Nothing, compared to the mysterious, exotic and sexy power of Tahiti vs the whip.
We’re No Angels (Michael Curtiz, 1955): 3/5
Bogart, Peter Ustinov, and Aldo Ray are all excellent, but the script swings freely from clever to overly sentimental in the way only a Christmas movie can. Bogart has moved from romantic lead to father figure.
The Desperate Hours (William Wyler, 1955):
It’s great to see Bogart return to playing someone mean and violent, the first such role in this fest in 14 years but he's still got it. Here he breaks into not a safe but into the suburban dream itself, filling it with mockery and contempt. Fredrich March is also a great actor, and the two of them together are a joy to watch. Bogart would be dead 13 months after this film’s release, aged 58.
