This post is my belated, modest tribute to Gene Hackman (1930-2025), a great actor whose versatility and effortlessness on screen will continue inspiring generations to come. The scene I chose to focus on is from Alan Parker’s drama Mississippi Burning (1988), that concerns two FBI agents, Rupert Anderson and Alan Ward, played by Gene Hackman…
Category: “Spotlight On” Feature Series
Film Scene Spotlight: Joel Schumacher’s Cousins
Happy Valentine’s Day to all of my followers! In spirit of all the onscreen love and its lovers, today’s highlighted film scene is from Joel Schumacher’s romantic comedy Cousins [1989], which is a remake of French comedy Cousin Cousine [1975]. Now, this film is no masterpiece by any stretch of imagination, and suffers on almost all fronts,…
Spotlight on Editing & Directing: Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987)
With its “body-horror” preoccupation, excessive violence, and tongue-in-cheek dialogues, RoboCop (1987) is a quintessential 1980s film, inspired by Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and made on the back of the success of The Terminator (1984). There are many things that made it good, including its cinematography provided by Jost Vacano (Das Boot (1981)), its unusual…
Film Scene Spotlight: Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata
As seen from a number of his other films, Ingmar Bergman was very interested in the relationship between two women (one dominant and another submissive), but, in Autumn Sonata, he presented something truly complex and sublime.
Actor Spotlight: Montgomery Clift
Clift was one of the most talented American actors and, unfortunately, one of the most misunderstood ones, who valued the craft of acting above financial success or even critical/public opinion…
Spotlight on Film 