Elmer Gantry (1960)

Watching a few Burt Lancaster movies recently and I was contemplating him as an actor, how he fills up a frame with his tall, athletic physique and his garrulous, charismatic, confidence. Lancaster won the Oscar for Best Actor for playing the title role of Elmer Gantry (1960), based on the Sinclair Lewis novel, and it […]

The Funeral (1996)

Continuing my journey through the filmography of director Abel Ferrara, it was time to dust off the DVD and revisit one of my favourite Christopher Walken performances in The Funeral (1996). Set in the 1930s, the film begins with one of its characters watching a Humphrey Bogart movie. From that point, The Funeral feels like […]

Mary (2005)

Continuing to explore the work of Abel Ferrara and Catholic imagery has always echoed throughout his films. Mary (2005) is an explicitly religious film though is also more of an essay movie, bringing together ideas and characters into a metatextual drama about representing religious deities and how to actually embody them in real life. Responding […]