The Alfred Hitchcock classic Rear Window is one of his best films ever.  There is something isolating about it and it brings us along to feel the anxiousness displayed by James Stewart.  We see everything happening in our own POV, knowing the truth but not exactly sure what is happening.

James Stewart plays photographer L.B. Jefferies, currently confined to a wheelchair with a broken leg, who spends his day staring out his window at the apartment complex and wondering about the lives of the people he sees.  When something strange happens in one of the windows across the way, Jefferies has his imagination run away with him… or does he?

Hitchcock creates such a great mysterious story that we try to work out at the same time as the main character.  He does it with a tremendous amount of suspense and tension.  James Stewart does a remarkable job of conveying that.

Grace Kelly is here as well, playing Lisa, Jefferies girlfriend who has been trying to get him to allow her into his life at a deeper level.  She is beautiful and it is an awesome when she joins in with Jefferies’ attempts to uncover what exactly was going on.  It showed their relationship in a strong way.

Raymond Burr played Thorwald, the neighbor whose behavior makes Jefferies think he has done something dastardly.  Burr does a great job with less, creating a wonderful antagonist for Jefferies, even though you are unsure if he has done anything wrong at all.

Rear Window is one of Hitchcock’s greatest films of all time and it holds up today.  It is am amazing film.

I had a chance to go to an education conference and we were lucky enough to have a chartered bus to travel from Iowa to Minneapolis.  On the trip home, we put in a movie that starred Samuel L. Jackson named Coach Carter.

Coach Carter is a basketball coach that takes a job at his old school, a school that is one of the worst school in the state in way of graduation and education.  There are several young players who have their own struggles with dedication, as well as the other typical troubles that face the typical high school student in this type of sport movie.

Coach Carter was a pretty entertaining film for one main reason.  It was Samuel L. Jackson.  Jackson is always good, even in poorly written, cliche-ridden sport movie.  Jackson had a presence and he was very believable in the role.  Without him, I am afraid that this movie would have been considerably worse.

Most of the movie’s younger actors, including a young Channing Tatum, were not very good here.  Tatum has improved dramatically as an actor and seeing him this way is a stark reminder of how much better he has become.

As an educator, there were a lot of things that were illogical or downright wrong about what goes on in the movie.  The principal and the teachers were doing and saying things that made no sense, but, ironically, much of what Coach Carter says and does was almost exactly what, ironically, was talked about at my conference.

In the end, Coach Carter is a fun time despite its problems.  And as the first of the “classic” reviews, Coach Carter gets a….

Hey.  So, I want to start writing up some reviews for the site that give you my thoughts and opinions on other movies that occurred prior to the movie reviews on EYG.  This might be some that I had already reviewed back before the site came here to WordPress or it could be films that I have never reviewed before.

I have used the term classic in the heading of this section, but that does not necessarily mean I am only reviewing classics.  Clue could be reviewed, (ok…Outlaw?) or something that is like the original Ghostbusters, or Star Wars or Monster Squad or ET or Casablanca… etc.

In fact, I have never seen Casablanca, but I do believe it is one of the films to be included in the Fathom special series.  Films like that could get a review.

You could get cult classics- such as Rocky Horror or The Evil Dead.

I could review the “classic” films such as The Room or Birdemic: Shock and Terror.

Or even just old movies that I hadn’t reviewed before.  Films on Netflix or Amazon or one of the many other streaming services available today.

We are taking the term “Classic Movies” and stretching it quite a bit.

I am also going to change my rating system for these reviews.  Instead of using the stars, I am going to use the following classifications (in the following order).

Paragon

Vintage

Classic

Fun Time

Meh

Overrated

Stale

Putrescent

Let’s see what this brings us.