Jackdaw Posts

There are crime films, and then there are crime sermons. Underworld U.S.A. doesn’t so much tell a story as it shouts one from the alleyway, kicks you in the ribs, and leaves you bleeding under the neon. Directed by Samuel Fuller in 1961, it’s one of the director’s most unrelenting noirs, a film obsessed with vengeance, power, and America’s love affair with organised crime. It isn’t pretty. It isn’t subtle. But like a glass of cheap whiskey at 3am, it does exactly what it should. The dark, revenge-driven world of Samuel Fuller’s Underworld U.S.A. (1961) Samuel Fuller: The Man Who Spat on Hollywood’s Carpet Samuel Fuller wasn’t a man for polish. He was a crime reporter at seventeen, a soldier in World War II, and later a filmmaker who made movies the way prizefighters throw punches—fast, raw, and aimed at the jaw. Underworld U.S.A. came late in his noir cycle, after Pickup on South Street and The Crimson Kimono. If those films toyed with subtlety, Underworld U.S.A. tears subtlet...

In the storm-tossed cinematic waters of maritime epics, The Bounty (1984) sails in with a sturdy hull, a high pedigree, and a curious leak: its leading man. Directed by Roger Donaldson and boasting a dream cast of British heavyweights, the film is the sixth screen adaptation of the infamous 1789 mutiny aboard HMS Bounty. Yes—six. Turns out, treason at sea sells better than peace on land.  But this Bounty tried something different. It jettisoned the noble-Brits-vs-crazy-seaman trope in favour of nuance, psychological realism, and a somewhat smouldering Mel Gibson doing his best to act conflicted rather than confused. It's a movie that wants to be deep, dark, and daring. And sometimes it is. But like Captain Bligh’s breadfruit trees, not all of it makes it to shore.   Marketing mutiny: Brian Bysouth’s poster delivers stormy skies, tense stares, and just enough promise to make you hoist the sails. Castaways and Contradictions: Who’s Really the Villain Here? Forget Errol Fl...

Michael Mann takes James Fenimore Cooper’s 19th-century novel, strips away the flowery prose, and leaves us with sweat, blood, and Daniel Day-Lewis running through the American wilderness like an Olympic athlete with a musket. It’s not a quiet film. It’s a drumbeat. Muskets cracking, cannons thundering, war cries tearing apart the green hills. It’s raw, relentless, and unapologetically violent — a cinematic forest fire that consumes everything in its path Theatrical release poster  20th Century Fox In a Nutshell: Death, Love, and the Frontier The story is deceptively simple: British versus French in the French and Indian War, with Native nations caught in the middle. Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) is the adopted white son of a dying Mohican line. He straddles two worlds — European and Indigenous — and fights for survival, love, and a code older than any empire. Madeleine Stowe’s Cora Munro is the love interest who keeps his heart tethered. Russell Means’ Chingachgook is the ancho...

Hollywood’s Golden Age wasn’t about glitter and glam. It was about control. A handful of studios ran everything — from the script to the starlet’s smile, from who got the spotlight to who got the boot. These studios were kingdoms. Loyalty was currency. Contracts were shackles. The red carpet hid more dirt than dreams. Before streaming crushed patience and art became clicks, the Big Five didn’t just make movies. They manufactured myths. Fed America what it wanted: escape, fantasy, and faces to worship.   Lupe Vélez with Laurel and Hardy in Hollywood Party (1934) — a moment that captures the chaos and charm of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The Big Five — Kings of the Celluloid Jungle Forget heroes. Real power lived in boardrooms and soundstages. MGM was the lion — Clark Gable roared, Judy Garland dazzled, Laurel and Hardy played fools while executives counted cash. MGM’s lion might as well roar: “Thou shalt not rival us.” Warner Bros. brought grit — The Jazz Singer silenced silen...

This isn’t a self-help book. It’s a confession booth for history’s worst-kept secrets. Greene lays out 48 laws — neat, polished, cruel little things. He doesn’t ask you to like them. He asks you to notice them. And once you notice, you can’t unsee. The boss who pretends to be magnanimous, the politician who smiles while sharpening a knife, the friend who gives “free” advice that somehow costs you dearly. Greene doesn’t invent these patterns. He arranges them, like a jeweller polishing daggers instead of diamonds. Power nudges you off the board. Greene shows how. Image credit unsplash.com/GRstocks The mechanics of the manual Every law is packaged with elegance: The law itself. Short, memorable. Never Outshine the Master. A story — often from the courts of Europe, where backstabbing was practically a sporting event. Greene’s analysis. Calm, clinical, almost smug. A reversal — when the law might misfire. It’s Aesop with more executions. What Greene gets right Clarity of d...

The sea is wide, the treasure is buried. And Geena Davis is swinging on a rope like she’s auditioning for Errol Flynn’s understudy in a shampoo commercial. Hollywood thought it had found pirate gold. Instead, it sank a studio, scarred careers, and proved that pirates in mid-90s America were as welcome as a shark at a kiddie pool.     Cutthroat Island, the $100 million treasure that went down with all hands.  Poster by Drew Struzan The Golden Age of Piracy (or, How to Burn $100 Million on Rum and Gunpowder) By the mid-90s, Hollywood was bored of action heroes with mullets and machine guns. Enter Renny Harlin , the Finnish dynamo who blew up planes ( Die Hard 2 ) and mountains ( Cliffhanger ). His pitch: pirates. Not the grim, scurvy-ridden kind with rotting teeth and syphilis, but Hollywood pirates — swashbuckling, witty, dangerous in a family-friendly way. The problem? Nobody wanted pirate movies in 1995. The last hit was decades earlier. The genre was as de...