First Word

German silent of the expressionism period, directed by Murnau. An adaption of Dracula.

Dracula or “Count Orlok” is played with stunning presence (more…)

Original German: Der Tunnel

(Rats. I tried to post this yesterday but the terminal timed out. Then, it would have been posted from Berlin: very apropos! Instead, you get it from Leipzig.)

This is the true story of some guys that make an elaborate attempt to help loved ones to escape from East (more…)

In German, with subtitles.

There are two levels at which this movie can be enjoyed. The first is a crime story structured a bit like (more…)

When I was young, I had a friend whose father but not mother was Jewish; thus, by the rabbinic rule, he was not Jewish; he was raised Methodist. But from his father he knew a lot about the Jewish ways. One thing I remember him saying was that Yiddish was basically a slang German that allowed Jews to insult (more…)

Based on the story of a minor yet successful turn-of-the-century D’Alembert opera, the basic threesome is the traveling dancer (more…)

A Preston Sturges comedy. It opens with a dark scene of two men fighting to the death on a roaring (more…)

At the beginning, Peachy (Michael Caine) appears in the newspaper office of “Kipling” (erstwhile Capt. von Trapp Christopher Plummer), and from his seriously degraded condition (more…)

This early silent movie is about a mutiny during czarist time on the battleship Potemkin. Director Eisenstein takes the mutiny (more…)

This is a comedy starring John Candy. It begins quite funny, with every cliché of slapstick (more…)

The relation of God and time has been a study of renewed interest in the last couple decades. Most writers have moved toward weakening or abandoning the traditional orthodox view that God dwells in a non-temporal eternity. (more…)