Crowd of Full Pockets

Movie and Music Analysis from One Lacking Any Credentials to Provide It

Category: Mystery/Thriller

  • Movie Review: “Ministry of Fear” (Fritz Lang, USA 1944)

    I spent much of this film’s 87-minute run time trying to figure out what exactly Lang was trying to say, but the film’s final moment made it clear: the film is an allegory for the dangers of over-consumption of junk food. Stephen Neale’s entire ordeal begins with winning a cake at a charity event and…

  • Movie Review: “Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse” (Fritz Lang, Germany 1933)

    This was Fritz Lang’s final film in Germany before he escaped to France and eventually the United States, fleeing the encroaching Nazi regime. When the film was released, Joseph Goebbels called Lang into his office to inform Lang that this film was being banned but also was so impressed with the film and Lang in…

  • Movie Review: “American Hustle” (David O. Russell, USA 2013)

    In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was released to eventual great (if undeserved) acclaim, a novel deconstructing the idea of “the American dream” through a distasteful character who seeks the trappings of that dream via some unfortunate means with eventually disastrous results. In more recent times, the clearest examples of films with the…