Goodies from Turner Classic Movies:
Double Indemnity (1944): Billy Wilder directs (and Raymond Chandler co-writes), as a creepy Fred MacMurray falls for a nasty Barbara Stanwyck and agrees to help her kill her husband, with their greatest threat coming from MacMurray’s insurance investigation colleague, a clever Edward G. Robinson. One of the defining films of film noir, and, yes, a movie I’d recommend anyone to watch. Except maybe Katherine. (Thanks, Scott!)
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939): Betty Davis is a marvelously lonely, twitchy, lovestruck Elizabeth I, and Errol Flynn is a too-handsome, flightily ambitious Earl of Essex, and the two of them are caught up in an oddly unengaging soap opera of politics, love, anger and ambition. Not one of Davis’s better films, but one of her best performances. Flynn plays Flynn — Davis wanted Olivier, but later came to appreciate his work.
Twelve Angry Men (1957): Henry Fonda as the proverbial odd man out in a jury in a capital case quick to rush to decision. It’s a fascinating combination of (now) famous talent a cross-section of everyman society, locked in an overheated room, betrayed by emotions, prejudices, and disinterest in serving up inconvenient justice. Should be required viewing in every civics classroom, even today, fifty years later.
