Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
if you think classic black and white movies are dull, we hope this list will change your mind.
The next time a CGI movie makes you sigh with its lack of style and verve, you’ll feel especially awed by The General, a silent black and white movie masterpiece that pretty much epitomes the concept of pulling out all the stops.
Buster Keaton’s character helping the Confederate Army hasn’t aged well. Everything else has. A bit of a bomb in its time, The General is stunning now thanks to its clockwork inventiveness and derring-do. It’s hard to believe anyone made anything this ambitious, so early in the life of cinema.
Keaton, known as the great stone face, throws his body into violent-yet-comic hazards without changing his expression — a skill he developed while being kicked around vaudeville stages by his father, hence the nickname “Buster.” Okay, maybe that didn’t age so well, either.
Fritz Lang’s silent, expressionistic Metropolis somehow still feels futuristic and avant-garde nearly 100 years after its release.
Operatic and vast in scope, it’s a visual feast that moves much slower than modern films — which is a sheer joy if you can allow yourself the time.
Also, it’s moral, literally spelled out in the final inter-title – feels especially relevant in the age of A.I. It is simply: “The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart.”
Originally 153 minutes long, Metropolis has been frequently recut, and while we aren’t big fans of chopping down a great director’s work, we think you can grasp the gist of the film with one of the shorter versions.
One of two Frank Capra films on this list. It Happened One Night is a screwball comedy that inspired countless road movies and rom-coms, almost none of them as good.
Clarke Gable and Claudette Colbert have electrifying chemistry as, respectively, a newspaper reporter on the make and a socialite on the run, trying to reunite with her husband. Yes, husband: This movie is fairly gleeful endorsement of extramarital love, and It Happened One Night could get away with that sort of thing because it came out just before the restrictive Hays Code took effect.
It also endorses showing a little leg (shame!) while hitchhiking (shame! shame!). It may leave you with the impression that life was a little more fun about a hundred years ago.
When people say they love old movies, this is likely the old movie they’re picturing. It’s perfect from beginning to end.
Ingrid Bergman, who also appears later on this list, is captivating as Ilsa Lund, a woman torn between love and her duty to fight fascism. Humphrey Bogart, as her ex-lover Rick, is as good a male lead as any movie had ever had.
But Casablanca is a movie where every single person is giving it their all, from director Michael Kurtiz to writers Howard Koch and Julius and Philip Epstein.
Everyone has their favorite moment, but ours is “I’m shocked, shocked” which we think about every time we read the latest headlines.
If you ever long for the good old days, watch this one to remind yourself that people of the past were anything but naive.
John Garfield makes being a drifter look like a good life choice when his character, Frank, wanders into a service station operated by the stunning Cora (Lana Turner). Unfortunately, she runs it with her husband.
Frank and Cora work out a little scheme to take care of that obstacle. It goes about as well as you’d expect if you’ve ever seen a ’40s noir.
The most fun movie ever made about insurance, this noir extravaganza sizzles off the screen in moments like the anklet scene — aka the “how fast was I going” scene — between Fred McMurray as an insurance man and Barbara Stanwyck as a scheming client.
It never goes too fast, which somehow makes it all the more wildly seductive.
It inspired many (often color) films, including 1981’s very good Body Heat, but we still prefer the black and white movie.
High Noon seems to fly by as it unfurls in real time over the 85 tight minutes leading up to the title. Gary Cooper plays Will Kane, a New Mexico marshall ready to ride into the sunset with his new bride Amy (Grace Kelly).
But Frank Miller, a brutal outlaw Kane once sent to prison, will arrive in town at noon, as his gang is ready to meet him. Everyone would understand if Kane slipped out of town to let someone else deal with the disaster to come.
But that’s not what he does.
Did you make it through another holiday season without watching this Frank Capra gem?
If so, like many of us, you may wrongly remember it as a sweet little affair. But no. The film is surprisingly honest about how much failure and struggle are part of the cost of living, and makes a clear-eyed case about why it’s still worth it to press on.
Also, we have to agree with this tweet about how the phone scene between Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart, despite its lack of anything gratuitous, is pretty hot.
The Alfred Hitchock films of the 1950s and ’60s could get a little slow — but Notorious crackles from start to finish thanks to the presence of one of the all-time greatest actresses, and magnetic lead characters.
Ingrid Bergman is magnificent as Alicia Huberman, whose virtue and morality are in constant question. She juggles endless demands and expectations, keeping her intentions a mystery until the very end.
Cary Grant as T.R. Devlin, a U.S. agent who recruits her. When people start falling in love, things get very tricky.
From the start of theater critic Addison Dewitt’s very unreliable narration (wryly delivered by George Sanders), you know you’re in excellent hands with this showbiz satire written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
Bette Davis plays a Broadway star who won’t give up the spotlight, and Anne Baxter is Eve Harrington, a shrewd manipulator ready to take her place. It’s a dynamic we’ve seen a million times since, from The Devil Wears Prada to Showgirls, but no one’s done it with more wit than All About Eve.
When a young Marilyn Monroe is the seventh or eight billed person in the cast, you know you’ve got an incredible lineup of actors.
TMZ might want to take notes from this noir classic, a story of a showbiz columnist, J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) who rules Broadway with a velveted fist.
Ruthless press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) toadies up to him, but proves to be pretty clever himself, as he tries to break up a relationship between Hunsecker’s little sister Susan (Susan Harrison) and a jazz guitarist.
It’s also one of the most beautifully shot black and white movies — the lights of Broadway have never felt so hot.
You’ll find yourself saying again during The Apartment: They made this in 1960? A Mad Men-era story of sex and ambition — and an obvious Mad Men influence — the film is about a young clerk on the make (Jack Lemmon) who has to loan out his apartment to executives who use it for secret trysts with vulnerable women, including one played by an adorable, and vulnerable, Shirley MacLaine.
You quickly finding yourself rooting hard for the have-nots in this film about refusing to bend over for the man.
MacLaine, Lemmon, director Billy Wilder and screenwriter IAL Diamond reunited three years later for Irma la Douce, which revisited some of the themes of The Apartment. It’s not a black and white movie, but don’t hold that against it.
We know, everyone thinks first of the shower scene. But Psycho hooks you long before that with its setup: Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane robs her boozy boss to flee across the Arizona desert to the arms of her deadbeat boyfriend. It’s juicy as hell, even before she checks into the worst possible hotel.
The only thing that keeps Psycho from perfection is its stodgy expository ending that feels unnecessary now, but may have been helpful for a 1960 audience that hadn’t yet seen a million movies about psychos.
You know how Shakespeare plays can feel cliched, but only because they were the first to do something that later inspired countless shallow imitations? Psycho is exactly like that.
Joseph Cotten plays pulp novelist Holly Martins, who arrives in ghostly postwar Vienna to investigate the death of an old friend, Harry Lime. But things aren’t as they seem.
The highlight is an utterly chilling little monologue by Orson Welles as he and Cotten ride a Ferris wheel and look at all the little people below.
We could tell you about all the great film deconstruction critic-turned-director Jean-Luc Godard is doing in this sexy, breezy girl-and-a-gun French crime thriller, but just watch it. You’ll be blown away by how fresh and cool it feels all these decades later.
Also, if you’re not a fan of subtitles, a lot of it is in English. This is one of those black and white movies that may sound like it’s going to be a challenge, but turns out to be as fun as anything you’ve ever watched.
You might also like this list of the 1960s Classic Movies That Are Still a Pleasure to Watch. Several are, yes, black and white movies.
Main image: Ingrid Bergman in Notorious. RKO Radio Pictures.
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
These prison movies are captivating. Get it?
Some of the best movies are actually movies about life on the outside, where the prison represents the mental traps imposed on us by society, or our own fears.
Other prison movies are about very real prisons, built for the deserving and innocent alike.
An early entry in the subgenre of women behind bars prison movies, John Cromwell’s Caged is about a married 19-year-old (Eleanor Parker) who is locked up after a botched bank robbery in which her husband is killed.
Hope Emerson plays sadistic prison maven, Evelyn Harper, in a story that reveals that prison may be the most corrupting influence of all.
The film was nominated for three Oscars.
Is it a prison movie? Or a war movie? We would say it’s both — David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai is a movie that never does what you expect.
Set in a Japanese prison camp in Thailand, the film portrays a battle of wills between captured British P.O.W. Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guiness) and his captor, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa). Saito demands that Nicholson and his troops build a railroad bridge over the River Kwai, which leads to questions of ethics and honor, and how to maintain your humanity while in captivity.
It was the most successful movie at the box office in 1957, and deservedly won seven Oscars, including for Best Picture. It’s one of those 1950s movies that is both a classic and a joy to watch.
One of the greatest prison movies, this Clint Eastwood film was the star’s fifth and final collaboration with Dirty Harry director Don Siegel. In fascinating detail, it imagines the circumstances of a real-life escape from the supposedly escape-proof Alcatraz Island in 1962.
Eastwood plays the real-life prisoner Frank Morris, whose whereabouts have been unknown since that chilly night in the early ’60s. He’ll turn 98 this year, if he’s still around.
The FBI’s investigation into the escape remains open.
You knew this was coming, so we’re putting it in this gallery nice and early.
One of the most beloved films of recent decades, and pulled from the same Stephen King story collection, Different Seasons, that also spawned Stand by Me and Apt Pupil, The Shawshank Redemption is a story of refusing to surrender your soul.
Tim Robbins stars as Andy Dufresne, a banker sentenced to consecutive life sentences in the killings of his wife and her lover. He befriends Ellis “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman) — and hatches a plot to dig his way out, while hiding the hole in his cell wall behind a poster of Rita Hayworth.
It’s one of the best prison movies and one of the best movies, period — IMDb ranks it No. 1 on its list of the Top 250 Movies of all.
Paul Newman is transfixing as the title character, a man of few words (and hardboiled egg gourmand) who refuses to bend to the cruelty of his Florida prison camp.
Strother Martin, as the captain of the camp, earned a place on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years… 100 Movie Quotes for this monologue that begins, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”
Guns N Roses fans will also recognize it from the opening of the band’s “Civil War.”
The third film in a series of hit independent prison movies written and directed by Jamaa Fanaka, Penitentiary III is extremely worth watching for the Midnight Thud fight alone.
Oh, you don’t know about the Midnight Thud? Thud is the toughest fighter in the prison, a powerful little person (played by Raymond Kessler, aka the WWE’s Haiti Kid) who delivers one of the most captivating fight scenes ever committed to film when he faces off with our protagonist, Too Sweet (Leon Isaac Kennedy).
Also, this is the first of two films on this list to feature the great Danny Trejo. He plays See Veer.
Trejo is one of the murderer’s row of stars who turns up in Con Air, a prison-on-a-plane movie in which Cameron Poe (played by Nicolas Cage, looking incredibly cool) takes on a whole plane full of felons when its Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom masterminds a hijacking.
This is one of those movies that — if you haven’t watched it in a while — will have constantly saying, “He’s in this, too?”
The cast includes John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, Dave Chappelle, and many, many more.
Some people argue that this doesn’t belong on a list of prison movies because the characters are on a plane. But as anyone who’s ever flown a middle seat in basic economy can attest, planes can be prisons.
Steve McQueen leads an all-star cast playing POWs who heroically escape from a Nazi prison camp in this classic, heavily fictionalized story of British POWs’ escape from Stalag Luft III during World War II.
Among the concessions to commercialism: sprinkling three Americans into the action. Thanks goodness McQueen’s Captain Virgil Hilts was there, or else who could have pulled off that spectacular motorcycle sequence (above)?
And now, a prison movie from the other Steve McQueen — the masterful British director whose film 12 Years a Slave won the Best Picture Oscar in 2014.
His directorial debut, however, was Hunger, in which his frequent collaborator, Michael Fassbender, plays Bobby Sands, a real-life member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who led an IRA hunger strike and took part in a no-wash protest behind bars.
Hunger is a brutal, hypnotic film that skillfully captures the day-to-day dehumanization of the prisoners.
Another grim prison saga that was also the directorial debut of a great filmmaker, Clemency stars Alfre Woodard as a prison ward trying to unemotionally do her job — which includes overseeing the death of a young inmate, Anthony Woods (Aldis Hodge) who maintains his innocence.
Many death-penalty films lecture their audiences (who may have already opposed the death penalty), but Clemency writer-director Chinonye Chukwu does not: She just lays out the facts of the situation, with as much restraint as Woodard’s warden — until emotions eventually make their inevitable break.
This is a wise, patient film that sidesteps preaching and Hollywood hokum in favor of a very chilling, very human story.
On the lighter side, The Longest Yard is a sports movie crossed with a prison movie… and a comedy. The film stars Burt Reynolds as a hard-driving, hard-hitting now-incarcerated former NFL quarterback who is tasked by a nasty warden with assembling a team of prisoners to play against the guards.
How do you think that works out?
Edward Norton stars as a savage white supremacist, Derek Vinyard, who realizes in prison that all of his beliefs are misguided.
‘In one deeply allegorical scene, he learns that a Black fellow inmate, Lamont (Guy Torry) received a harsher sentence (six years) for stealing a TV than he received for killing two Black men (three years).
In another crucial scene, he learns that the prisons Aryan Brotherhood is just using white supremacy as a facade to manipulate hopeless, uneducated people and wrest power for its leaders.
A very different look at prison life, released in the same year as The Longest Yard. We aren’t going to claim this low-budget Roger Corman production, also known as Renegade Girls, is a great film. But it is the debut of a very great filmmaker: writer-director Jonathan Demme would go on to make Silence of the Lambs, one of the best films of all time, and to repay Corman for his confidence by casting him in the role of FBI Director Hayden Burke.
Silence of the Lambs was also shot but Demme’s go-to cinematographer, Tak Fujimoto, who also shot Caged Heat.
Caged Heat is a cheap exploitation flick, sure, but it contains some Demme hallmarks: strong female protagonists, a strong sense of empathy for the characters, and social consciousness.
A 1975 New York Times story on the rise of “trashy” midnight movies concluded that it “does not set new standards of cheapness, violence or grossness, as most midnight movies seem determined to do. It is a film about women in prison that offers little more than some zippy music, a lot of bosom shots and a perverted prison doctor.”
High praise from the paper of record.
You may also like this list of the 15 Movie Con Artists We Fall for Every Time. Some of them end up in prison.
You might also like this list of Gen X Movie Stars Gone Too Soon.
Main image: Caged Heat. New World Pictures.
