Jacob Thomson Official Website

Twelve O'Clock High:  I was a B-17 bombardier, so how could I not enjoy this movie? Dean Jagger absolutely earned his Academy Award. Gregory Peck probably should have got one as well.

Twelve O'Clock High

A Stranger Among Us:  This is a fascinating movie. Melanie Griffith does a nice job as the gentile police detective under cover in a Brooklyn Chassidic community who falls for the Rebbe's son, played by Eric Thal. Besides the mystery—and this is a true mystery, where you don't know who the murderer is until the end of the movie—the ending is somewhat unique for this type story, where the Rebbe's son is forced to make a choice and, strangely, makes the right one.

A Stranger
Among Us

Tora! Tora! Tora!:  This American/Japanese co-production is without question the best filming of the Pearl Harbor story. You don't have to wade through a silly love story to get to the action. Rather, the producers took almost a documentary approach. Made in the days before computer graphics, the planes are real, and the spectacular stunts were performed by living stunt men and not 3D programmers. You do have to pay a bit more attention during the Japanese scenes, mind you, since the actors speak Japanese, with subtitles providing a translation.

Tora! Tora! Tora!

Manhunter:  Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon has been filmed twice. This first version, starring "CSI's" William Peterson as FBI profiler Will Graham, is, in my opinion, the better of the two. Both movies are good, I just happen to like this one a little better, if only because it is centered squarely on Graham, with Hannibal Lector (spelled "Lecktor" in the credits, for some reason), an important, but clearly peripheral character, as he was in the novel. Brian Cox is just right in the Lector role, and Tom Noonan makes a far better Francis Dolarhyde than Ralph Fiennes who is, really, much too good looking for the role of a murderer whose physical imperfections—Dolarhyde has a surgically-repaired harelip, cleft palate, and hideous teeth—are a major source of his psychotic behavior.

Manhunter

Red Dragon