Tag: Cinema Sugar

• How ‘Hairspray’ and ‘Once’ made me love musicals

  To cap off Musicals Month at Cinema Sugar, I wrote about seeing Once and Hairspray in the summer of 2007 and how they transformed my rather reductive view of musicals as cheesy, frivolous entertainment: Seeing these movies individually made big dents in my stony resolve against the allure of musicals, but seeing them within about […]

  May 30, 2023

  Film

  Cinema Sugar, film, Hairspray, Once

• My ‘Back to the Future’ bonanza

  Well, I finally did it: I finally revealed my decades-old collection of Back to the Future memorabilia. With it being Sci-Fi Month at Cinema Sugar, I thought the timing was right to show-and-tell such items as: I had a blast doing this, so please watch, enjoy, and share:

  January 19, 2023

  Film

  Back to the Future, Cinema Sugar, film

• Top 5 Christmas Movies

  Originally published at Cinema Sugar. 1. It’s A Wonderful Life The once and future king of Christmas movies. I could praise a lot of things: the cinematography, the supporting cast, the dramatic depth of Jimmy Stewart’s first postwar performance. But its magic ultimately comes down to Harry’s closing line—“A toast to my big brother, George, […]

  December 6, 2022

  Film

  best of, Christmas, Cinema Sugar, film, lists, movies

• 7 Hard-Boiled Lessons from Noir Films Old and New

  Originally published at Cinema Sugar. These are dark times. It’s tempting to feel that it’s never been darker, that the weight of our modern struggles is unprecedented.  But I take comfort in knowing that film noir—a genre that has existed for almost 100 years—has been there before. It’s seen some shit. To show this, I’ve […]

  November 28, 2022

  Film

  best of, Cinema Sugar, film, film noir, lists, movies

• Top 5 Noir Movies

  Originally published at Cinema Sugar. 1. Double Indemnity This isn’t the first major noir (fedora-tip to The Maltese Falcon) but damned if it isn’t the genre’s absolute peak: femme fatale, no-nonsense narration, crime gone wrong, investigator on the case. It’s hard to pick Billy Wilder’s best movie but this has to be near the top. […]

  November 4, 2022

  Film

  best of, Cinema Sugar, film, film noir, lists, movies

• Top 5 Horror Movies

  Originally published at Cinema Sugar. 1. The Ring Seeing this Gore Verbinski joint in early high school did three important things: it initiated my undying love of Naomi Watts, it showed me how artful scary movies can be, and it scarred me so deeply that I subsequently swore off horror for a long time. So […]

  October 10, 2022

  Film

  best of, Cinema Sugar, film, horror, lists, movies

• Top 5 High School Movies

  Originally published at Cinema Sugar. 1. Brick If you found high school to be a dark, inscrutable enigma with a rigidly enforced social-class structure and impenetrable lingo, you’ll deeply appreciate Rian Johnson’s lean and masterful debut feature that renders adolescence as gritty film noir. A young, sphinx-like Joseph Gordon-Levitt investigates his ex-girlfriend’s mysterious disappearance like […]

  September 6, 2022

  Film

  best of, Cinema Sugar, film, high school, lists, movies

• The High School Movie Party: That’s L-I-V-I-N

  Originally published at Cinema Sugar. Too many unsupervised teenagers at a fancy house. Red Solo cups strewn about. A couple making out. A skater kid sliding down the stairs into a tower of beer cans. Someone throwing up at just the wrong moment. Welcome to a high-school movie house party. Despite seeing this kind of […]

  September 5, 2022

  Film

  Cinema Sugar, film, high school, movies

• A spoonful of Cinema Sugar

  I’m very excited to share a new thing I’m part of that’s now live on the internet: Cinema Sugar, a website/newsletter/social media destination for people who love to see, think about, and talk about movies. Our mission statement: We are not interested in celebrity culture. We are not interested in hate-watching, takedowns, or tasteless criticism. […]

  September 1, 2022

  Film, Writing

  Cinema Sugar, film, movies