How had I never seen... "White Christmas"?

by Cláudio Alves

As someone who loves Christmas and the musical genre, I'm ashamed to say I'd never seen 1954's White Christmas until this year. Irving Berlin's classic is beloved by many, and it has become one of those immortal holiday movies that seem to have everlasting popularity. Starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen, the picture's a jolly affair full of merry dance breaks and one of those ridiculous "let's put on a show" stories that were so common in musicals of this particular era. 

It's with great sadness that I admit I wasn't won over by White Christmas, not completely. That being said, there's plenty to love about this Yuletide affair. Because now's a time for merriment and celebration, let's sprint through the negatives to get to the positives…

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How Had I Never Seen... "Beau Travail"?

by Cláudio Alves

People cope with stress in different ways. Earlier this month, when the US presidential election was unfolding and the world held its breath, I turned to Twitter to reminisce about 2020 cinematic excellence and try to calm my nerves. I also scoured the internet for good deals on physical media, a bit of retail therapy, adding more DVDs and Blu-Rays to a collection that has long ago surpassed a thousand films. Part of the new additions were my first ever Criterion editions! 

All this to say that the discs arrived this week and, since the Criterion Channel has a new collection of Claire Denis films, I decided to finally watch the much-lauded Beau Travail and write about the experience. And what an experience it was…

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How Had I Never Seen, 1987 Special: ROBOCOP

By Lynn Lee (with special guest Jeff Chen)

Until recently, I’d never seen RoboCop, Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 sci-fi classic about a viciously murdered cop who’s resurrected as a cyborg supercop.  I was too young to see it when it first came out and didn’t get around to it when I was older, partly because I’d heard it was gruesomely violent.  However, I learned it had passionate fans that included some very astute critics.  Among them is Jeff Chen, former writer for ReelTalk Movie Reviews and a fellow alum of the dearly departed online critics’ group Cinemarati (through which I met both him and TFE’s very own Nathaniel), who ranks RoboCop as his favorite movie.  As part of TFE’s 1987 retrospective, I finally saw RoboCop and invited Jeff to discuss my reactions as a first-time viewer and how the movie has remained in our cultural consciousness for over 30 years.

JEFF: RoboCop is indeed my favorite movie.  A lot of that has to do with timing.  I was already an avid movie watcher as a teenager, but I’d been mostly watching PG or (the new, at the time) PG-13 movies.  I was 15 when I went to my best friend’s house and he put on a VHS copy of RoboCop.  And I was traumatized and exhilarated...

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1987: The Untouchable Sean Connery, a look at the late actor's Oscar-winning performance

by Josh Bierman

When I heard about our 1987 retrospective I wanted to choose a film that I had never seen. I’ve been striving to cover blindspots in my film viewing history since the start of quarantine. I looked at the list of movies released in that year and when I saw The Untouchables the choice became obvious. At my home film festival, Cinema Quarantino, I’ve fallen in love with Kevin Costner as if it was 1991. I’ve also been really drawn to the films of Brian De Palma. All of that fell by the wayside when I woke up on Saturday morning to the news of Sean Connery’s passing. 

We’re all friends here, so please don’t judge when I say in keeping with the theme of having serious blind spots, the only other Sean Connery movie I’d seen is Murder on the Orient Express. Connery released his last studio film just as I was becoming obsessed with movies around the age of ten, so he wasn’t someone who was on my radar. I mainly associated Connery with Darrell Hammond’s inimitable SNL impersonation on Celebrity Jeopardy as well as his later career interviews (we’d be remiss to forget his one worded declaration of the Best Supporting Actress winner of 2002, we know Kathy Bates hasn’t). As if I wasn’t eager enough to watch it already, I welcomed the opportunity to not only watch a bit of Connery’s filmography, but the movie that won him his Academy Award...

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How Had I Never Seen..."Bram Stoker's Dracula"

By Michael Cusumano

“You haven’t seen Bram Stoker’s Dracula?” my girlfriend gasped, stopping her laundry folding dead.

This caught my attention as it upset the established dynamic of our relationship. I am the one who interrupts every conversation with some version of “What? You’re telling me you’ve never seen [insert name of film no one has ever watched outside a film studies program]?!"

She then reflected on how gorgeous Coppola’s vampire opus is and chastised herself for not owning it. This again was a reversal of the natural order. I wake up with night sweats at the thought that there is a great movie somewhere I don’t own. She owns approximately seven DVD’s she acquired by accident in the early 00’s which she stores in a dusty case next to "Jagged Little Pill" and her old Microsoft startup discs.

I immediately turned off what I was watching and popped on the Coppola film...

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