Tag: George Coulouris

REVIEW: Citizen Kane [1941]

Jared Mobarak

It’ll probably turn out to be a very simple thing. Of all the classics of black and white cinema during the sound age, Orson Welles‘ Citizen Kane has always been the one to me that was easiest to shortchange. That’s what being saddled with the label “Best Movie of All-time” does. It provides a target. If you agree with those sentiments, you’re going along with the crowd. If you disagree, you’re merely trying too hard to be contrarian. And there are plenty of reasons to do both. I personally refused…

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REVIEW: Murder on the Orient Express [1974]

Jared Mobarak

With the help of a hat box. If the way in which Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) manipulates his suspects into perfectly incriminating themselves upon inquisition—often unbeknownst to us until the final reveal—infers that he has a photographic memory, we the audience need a bit more exposition as it concerns yet unseen connections than perhaps the film would like to share. This is why director Sidney Lumet and screenwriter Paul Dehn provide an opening montage of newspaper clippings and shadowy reenactments of young Daisy Armstrong’s kidnapping and subsequent murder. Because it…

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