Tag: The Big Sleep

REVIEW: Ball of Fire [1941]

Jared Mobarak

“Don’t tell me the jive session has beat off without baby!” With the likes of His Girl Friday, The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, and Bringing Up Baby, it may seem odd that my first foray into Howard Hawks‘ oeuvre would be the screwball comedy Ball of Fire. Considering I’m criminally behind on catching up with the cinematic 40s and 50s, it is. Co-conceived and -scripted by Billy Wilder, this hyper-real world contains more than just a passing similarity to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Between mentioning the Disney film…

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REVIEW: Micmacs à tire-larigot [Micmacs] [2009]

Jared Mobarak

“No, I am the vegetable crisper” With a literal translation of ‘Non-stop Shenanigans”, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs à tire-larigot is definitely his return to high-style comedy and proof he may in fact belong in an insane asylum. His last film, A Very Long Engagement, was a fantastic wartime document shot in his signature aesthetic, but it’s subject matter brought it away from the more absurd surrealism we became used to with Amélie and Delicatessen. This isn’t to say Micmacs lacks a serious underlying story to the aforementioned steady stream of wackiness;…

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