Film Review: Mildred Pierce (1945)

Shots ring out in a beautiful, well-adorned house. In stark, Expressionistic black and white, a man falls into frame. His name is Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott), and as life oozes out of him, he manages one final word: Mildred. It's the name of his new wife (played by Joan Crawford in Oscar-winning form) who is introduced in similarly bleak fashion. Depicted in luminous, shimmering monochrome, Mildred Pierce is first seen contemplating taking the proverbial long walk off a very literal short pier. She is only stopped from taking a final, fatal step by a passing police officer, who reminds her that if she does anything silly, he'll have to dive in to save her. His meaning is easily understood: selfishness ripples out and hurts people beside the perpetrator. It's a lesson Mildred knows all too well.

Film Review: A Guy Named Joe (1943)

After America entered World War II in the wake of Pearl Harbour, there was a raft of Hollywood films dedicated to making the case for war in ways both subtle and not. The Ox-Bow Incident, for example, is a Western about the dangers of mob mentality and the terrible things that can happen when good men do nothing. It's a story that could have been told at any time, yet the context of when it was produced and released - not to mention the inclusion of a card asking viewers to buy War Bonds at the end - indicate how film-makers were using their art to support the national cause.

Film Review: All The King's Men (1949)

Considering the sort of gruelling election cycle that we've all recently played witness to, it's hard not to feel just a little bit jaded about the political process. After countless hours of negative attack ads from both sides, not to mention all the darkly metastatic talk about voter suppression, intimidation and other sinister works, real or imagined, it's hard not to wonder how things got quite so bad.