- Million Dollar Legs (Edward Cline)
- The Ring (Alfred Hitchcock)
- Rebels on Pointe (Bobbi Jo Hart)
- The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles)
- The Primrose Path (Gregory La Cava)
- Mudbound (Dee Rees)
- High and Low (Akira Kurosawa)
- Bluebeard’s Eight Wife (Ernst Lubitsch)
- Giant (George Stevens)
- Johnny Belinda (Jean Negolescu)
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1- I LOVE movies and books that portray an insane world by presenting it as normal to its own inhabitants. Alice In Wonderland and Through The Lookingglass are my favorite books. This is the reason that I adore The Palm Beach Story, too. For sheer insanity but not on the epic scale of Alice or the denizens of Palm Beach, I heartily recommend Million Dollar Legs. It is so nuts and it features W.C. Fields. What else do you need.
2- Recently re-watched High and Low. What a masterpiece this is. The sustained tension is masterfully handled and the moral dilemmas that the characters are put through present real ethical quandaries for the audience. The first half is complete room-bound, almost as claustrophobic as the room in Rope. What makes this part of the film so dazzling is that even though it is all played in a very restricted space, it is shot in widescreen which creates a dizzying feeling. The Olympian home in the first section, gives way to the Hades of the Japanese underworld. Brueghel at his best. Mifune is masterful and the final confrontation between him and the villain, showing Mifune’s fruitless attempts to understand why the villain did what he did, are dazzling.