Reaction Shots

I really don’t know how many times I’ve seen The Shop Around the Corner , but I have only seen It’s a Wonderful Life a handful of times and I think the last time I saw it, Reagan was president. Both are Christmas holiday staples and for good reason, but or maybe, and I keep bumping up to a subtext in one that is practically text or context in the other. In It’s a Wonderful Life , we run smack dab into capitalist exploitation and the fight against it writ large. In The Shop Around the Corner , it is not, by any stretch, a main theme, but how the workers are treated struck a nerve with me early on and continues to be struck. I don’t think a recap for either is needed as both are pretty etched in the popular consciousness, but while one is more fantastical, the other is very much rom-com. The one focuses on George Bailey, whose self-sacrificed and doing the right thing leads him afoul of Mr. Potter and perhaps, fate itself. When his uncle fails to deposit the $8,000 to cover the Bailey’s...

Rob Reiner (1947-2025) If you were around in the early seventies, you couldn’t miss All in the Family. Norman Lear had created something unique. It wasn’t just a that this was a sitcom with larger issues on its mind; it was both genuinely thoughtful and ridiculously funny. Regardless of how easily described each of the principles were, none of them were caricatures or stereotypes. Archie was a bigot, sure, but he loved his family very much and would occasionally show a gentle side when you least expected it. Edith was the scatterbrain ditz, but she could act with steel resolve and stand up for herself. Gloria was the daughter chafing at still living under her parents’ roof with her husband until they could move out and might have been the most well-rounded character, not being exaggerated or broadly drawn to begin with. And then there was her husband, Mike. Mike was the embodiment of the bleeding heart liberal, the very stereotype (whoops, was I wrong?) of the suburban radical who cou...

  This is likely to wind up being a series. We’re entering the season where prestige movies and big tentpole flicks vie for your attention and the Academy’s. These are not predictions, by the way. However, I wouldn’t and won’t be surprised if a number of titles and names show up on Oscar Night. I should also add that “Oscar bait” doesn’t necessarily infer an unworthy or even bad film. It just serves to delineate some of the elements that AMPAS voters seem to reward movies for, often over and against other, better films or. performances. For example, by no metric that I can think of is Nuremberg a bad or unworthy film. It’s actually quite good, if somewhat too prestige-y for its own good. It’s a tight film dealing with an important historical event - Herman Göring’s surrender to Allied forces and subsequent trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials, and subsequent suicide. The story unfolds via Göring’s psychological assessment by Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelly. Russell Crow as...