Shadow of a Doubt

#3 in my Ranking of Alfred Hitchcock's films. There's something extra sinister about this tale of lost innocence in a sleepy little California town. The dramatization and fictionalization of a real life killer takes what could have been completely standard tropes and twists them an extra degree or two by adding in an element of…

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Saboteur

#17 in my Ranking of Alfred Hitchcock's films. There are shades of Hitchcock's other films both forward and back. The most obvious are North by Northwest and Young and Innocent to me. All three are stories of men falsely accused of crimes they did not commit and going on the run to clear their names.…

Van Helsing

This is not what I would call a good movie. It's characters are too thin, the romance too contrived, the structure too loose, and the theme too scattershot, but what it lacks in some of the basic building blocks of storytelling it partially makes up for in charm and a deep seeded desire to entertain…

Suspicion

#11 in my Ranking of Alfred Hitchcock's films. This movie is almost entirely built on performance, a gentle balance between Cary Grant exuding enigmatic charm, easy duplicitousness, and barely concealed malice, often within the same scene. The audience is set to interpret the variations in how he presents himself along with Joan Fontaine, our heroine.…

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

#35 in my Ranking of Alfred Hitchcock's films. This is very much not a Hitchcock movie. He didn't have any hand in writing it, and apparently Carole Lombard pushed him around a bit on set while she had championed the concept to production to begin with. It's a bit of a sore thumb that way…