Story and You

(image via ianhendry.com) We all have dreams, ideas about what we want our futures to be like. This is a good thing: dreams give us motivation, something to strive for. But in the end, they're just products of our own minds, little fantasies we've conjured up. Real life is quite a bit different, sometimes for the worse, but sometimes for the better--the surprises that come with living can sometimes lead to much better things than we ever could have imagined for ourselves. But if we push these unexpected gifts away, keep clinging to those images we've created for ourselves, we might find all of the happiness life has to offer us slipping right through our fingers. This is the conundrum facing Laurence Harvey's Joe Lampton in the magnificent Room at the Top . Laurence Harvey first wowed me with his disconcerting, emotionless performance in The Manchurian Candidate , and he is equally impressive here--this role is much more human, but he still has this fascinating a...

(image via RottenTomatoes) If you've been noticing that these movie of the week posts have been coming more rapidly than once a week lately, the reason is that I've slowly but surely fallen a few weeks behind since I started this series--now I'm just playing catch-up! Today I'm taking a look at Tight Spot , a film featuring one of my favorite actresses playing a role completely unlike anything else she had ever done before: the lovely Ginger Rogers. Actors always take a risk when they step out of their comfort zone like she does here, but in this case it turns out to be a fantastic choice, with Rogers putting in one of the greatest performances I've ever seen from her.

(image via RottenTomatoes) I have a real fondness for the bold, somewhat uneven films that started coming out as the Production Code began to die; the films that pushed the boundaries of what film-goers had been able to see for decades, but were still testing the waters of what American films should look like going forward. The films in this category which explore social issues are particularly interesting, and The Defiant Ones is no exception, a daring film that explores what racism looks like when societal comforts are removed and all that's left is a pure, desperate desire for survival at any cost.

It's Audrey Hepburn week! At least in my house. I've spent the last few days watching through the majority of her 1950s filmography, and in the midst of it I discovered a magical little masterpiece, the perfect film to serve as the first technicolor picture I highlight in this series: Funny Face , the most fun and stylish musical this side of Golden Age Hollywood.

When I began this series, I really did intend for it to be classic film of the week, not Clark Gable film of the week! But once again, his filmography has made up most of my classic viewing over the last few days, and this film in particular stood out to me as a real under-seen and underrated gem, a rather simple action-romance picture that is wonderfully elevated by its casting of two of the most legendary talents to come out of Hollywood, Clark Gable and Barbara Stanwyck.

Normally I'm not a big fan of war films, but this week I'm very exited to talk about a particularly great one I discovered during--you guessed it--TCM's tribute to Clark Gable. Run Silent, Run Deep is a late-era Clark film that features two powerhouse performances from Clark and his co-star Burt Lancaster, a truly remarkable screen pairing that makes this film stand out from all of the other WWII films produced by classic Hollywood.