From my favorite movies..

Best movie ever!

Admirable film.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

"Criss Cross" takes a while to get going, but once it does, boy does it.Burt Lancaster is intense and brooding as a man who returns to his hometown and the ex-wife (Yvonne De Carlo) he can't get over. She's fallen in with a crime boss (Dan Duryea), and he concocts a scheme to get her free and run away with her. This being a film noir, I wasn't all that surprised by the scheme going awry, but I was surprised at just how badly it does so. This is one bleak movie with one very bleak ending, one I was not expecting at all.The three principles are terrific, not surprisingly. This is actually the only role I've ever seen De Carlo in outside of Lily Munster, and I couldn't take my eyes off of her. There's something endlessly fascinating about her.Grade: A

Sure, you've seen it all before: the snarling villain (Dan Duryea), the black widow babe (Yvonne DeCarlo), and the hapless fall guy who just can't help himself (Burt Lancaster). But this is vintage noir from the golden age, done with real style and conviction. What stays with me are those scenes that have since worked their way into the textbook. There's the nightclub scene, where Lancaster gazes longingly at lost love DeCarlo, while she sambas with new honey boy Tony Curtis. Meanwhile there's this pulsating Latin beat that keeps going and going and everybody's shaking it except poor Lancaster. You feel the doom in the air and know this has to end badly. Then there's that nervous scene in the hospital where Lancaster's all laid up. But who's this new guy. He looks like Joe Average, but is he. Director Siodmak really knows how to shift gears and make these quiet moments creepy. Everybody's been waiting for the robbery, but it seems like a cloudy dream, the kind you only half remember and wish you could forget. Ghostly figures drift in and out of focus, yet which one's Lancaster and who's got the money. Hollywood's fog machines were really working overtime on this one. Of course, it all leads up to the final scene, which is about as good as noir gets. The moment of reckoning when everything comes together, this time with a good view of eternity and in the moonlight, no less. The feeling that it all had to happen from the beginning is so thick you can cut it with the proverbial knife.Sure, the D-cup DeCarlo's not quite up to the acting challenge, and the great Duryea doesn't get enough scenes, but consider the screen time given to two deserving foot soldiers of the golden era. Once you've seen him, you never forget him: that raspy-voiced gnome Percy Helton as the bartender. There's been no one like him before or since, a sly little troll who's escaped from the pages of Grimm's Fairy Tales. Yet I've never seen him give anything less than an A-grade performance that lifted many a B-movie above the forgettable. On the other hand, there's the completely ordinary Robert Osterloh as the mysterious stranger. His face is sort of familiar. Maybe he's the guy who fixes your car or fills your prescription or on a really bad night, shoves a gun in your gut. But like Helton, he too never gave anything less than an expert performance. Too bad his little Hollywood star never glowed, but he sure made a lot of others brighter than they were.It's all there and in the kind of irreplaceable black and white that Hollywood's been trying to remake in Technicolor for years. So catch up with this original and find out why.

In spite of its big-name cast and fine camera-work, 1948's Criss Cross was somewhat disappointing and a less-than-riveting slice of Film Noir.Set in sunny Los Angeles, Armored Car Driver, Steve Thompson, gets re-acquainted with his less-than-trustworthy ex-wife, Anna, who's recently taken up with Slim Dundee, a notoriously jealous underworld thug.At times this film had the feel of being nothing but a standard "Chick Flick" and it lacked the necessary grit and overall toughness required, in my books, to make it a real, bona-fide Noir gem.Criss Cross starred Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo and Dan Duryea.

Yvonne DeCarlo sure plays a heck of a femme fatale in this film! And, she's a heck of a lot sexier than when she played Lily Munster! It seems that she was married to a poor sap (Burt Lancaster) but they've since divorced. However, he has it bad for her...and she is beginning to show signs that she might like to marry him all over again. So his hopes raise quickly---only to be dashed when she suddenly runs off with a hood (Dan Duryea--who almost ALWAYS played bad guys). Yet, oddly, despite this, she STILL has her claws in him and is able to manipulate him into being the inside man for an armored car robbery--as he's one of the crew of the truck. Things, however, don't go as you'd expect...see this excellent film to see what happens next.Considering the film has great baddies and a taut script, it's one of the better examples of film noir--true film noir with the perfect dame, great dialog, wonderful camera work--the whole shebang!