Tagged: Popover Shirt
Train Dreams: Joel Edgerton’s Wabash Chore Coat as Robert Grainier
Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier in Train Dreams (2025)
Vitals
Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier, laconic logger
Pacific Northwest, Summer 1917 through 1920
Film: Train Dreams
Release Date: January 26, 2025
Director: Clint Bentley
Costume Designer: Malgosia Turzanska
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Train Dreams debuted at Sundance one year ago today but gained wider attention after its official November 2025 release, driving a momentum that led to its four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay for director Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar’s treatment of Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same name, Best Original Song for Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner’s contribution, and Best Cinematography for Adolpho Veloso’s majestic photography.
“His name was Robert Grainier, and he lived more than 80 years in and around the town of Bonners Ferry, Idaho,” narrates Will Patton as we meet our taciturn protagonist, portrayed by Joel Edgerton. “In his time, he traveled west to within a few dozen miles of the Pacific—so he’d never seen the ocean itself—and as far east as the town of Libby, 40 miles inside Montana.” Continue reading
Rock Hudson’s Corduroy Jacket on McMillan & Wife (“Murder by the Barrel”)
Rock Hudson on McMillan and Wife (Episode 1.01: “Murder by the Barrel”)
Vitals
Rock Hudson as Stuart “Mac” McMillan, San Francisco police commissioner and former defense attorney
San Francisco, Fall 1971
Series: McMillan & Wife
Episode: “Murder by the Barrel” (Episode 1.01)
Air Date: September 29, 1971
Director: John Astin
Creator: Leonard B. Stern
Costumes: Burton Miller
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Screen icon Rock Hudson was born 100 years ago today on November 17, 1925. After launching his career as a romantic leading man through the 1950s and ’60s, Hudson redefined the second phase of his career with a dramatic role in John Frankenheimer’s excellent experimental drama Seconds (1966) and the espionage thriller Ice Station Zebra (1968)—the latter a favorite of both Hudson himself and eccentric superfan Howard Hughes. Unsatisfied with the screen roles he was being offered, even after creating his own production companies, Hudson turned to television with the mystery series McMillan & Wife.
Hudson starred as San Francisco police commissioner Stuart “Mac” McMillan with Susan Saint James as his titular wife, Sally. The series may be the closest spiritual successor to The Thin Man films, as Mac and Sally’s witty banter and affectionate, equal-footed partnership recall the dynamic charm of William Powell and Myrna Loy’s Nick and Nora Charles. What sets McMillan & Wife apart from contemporaries, however, is that Mac isn’t a typical TV detective but a high-ranking commissioner, whose background as a criminal defense attorney gives him a greater familiarity with the city’s crooks and their cohorts.
Like the other NBC Mystery Movie pilots that debuted during the 1971-1972 season (specifically Columbo and McCloud), McMillan & Wife became a hit and the first canonical episode, “Murder by the Barrel”, aired less than two weeks later after its feature-length debut. Continue reading
Daniel Craig’s Cream Linen Suit in Queer
Daniel Craig as William Lee in Queer (2024)
Vitals
Daniel Craig as William Lee, dissolute American expatriate
Mexico City, Spring 1951 and 1953
Film: Queer
Release Date: November 27, 2024
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Costume Designer: Jonathan Anderson
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Following the success of Challengers earlier in the year, director Luca Guadagnino kept his 2024 momentum going with Queer, adapted from the 1985 novella by Beat Generation icon William S. Burroughs—who died 28 years ago today, on August 2, 1997. Daniel Craig stars as William Lee, a clear stand-in for Burroughs, complete with the author’s distinctive wardrobe, substance issues, and ever-present handgun—albeit with some of the rougher edges sanded down for the screen. Continue reading
Thunderball: Rik Van Nutter’s Tropical Shirts as Felix Leiter
Rik Van Nutter as Felix Leiter in Thunderball (1965)
Vitals
Rik Van Nutter as Felix Leiter, CIA agent
Nassau, The Bahamas, Summer 1965
Film: Thunderball
Release Date: December 29, 1965
Director: Terence Young
Wardrobe Designer: Anthony Mendleson
Background
Just as I ended last summer by looking at one of James Bond’s aloha-wearing allies in Thunderball, let’s kick off the first weekend of summer during Thunderball‘s 60th anniversary year with Bond’s “brother from Langley” dripped out for days in the tropics. Continue reading
Coup de Torchon: Philippe Noiret’s Khaki Uniform
Philippe Noiret in Coup de Torchon (1981)
Vitals
Philippe Noiret as Lucien Cordier, ineffective yet conniving colonial police chief
French West Africa, Summer 1938
Film: Coup de Torchon
(English title: Clean Slate)
Release Date: November 4, 1981
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Costume Designer: Jacqueline Moreau
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
For the 12th anniversary of my first-ever BAMF Style post, today’s entry is a labor of love analyzing the style from the French adaptation of one of my favorite novels, Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson. Born 118 years ago tomorrow on September 27, 1906, Thompson specialized in hardboiled crime fiction that has frequently been adapted into movies, including The Getaway, The Grifters, and The Killer Inside Me.
Published sixty years ago in 1964, Pop. 1280 is a darkly comic retread of the themes Thompson explored in The Killer Inside Me, following a southern sheriff whose mild-mannered persona masks his psychopathy. Set during the 1910s, Pop. 1280 is narrated by Nick Corey, the blissfully lazy “high sheriff of Potts County,” the 47th largest in an unnamed state of 47 counties. Nick presents himself as a dimwitted pushover, while secretly manipulating and murdering his way through his friends, family, and mistresses, all while nurturing delusions of being God’s agent sent to punish the sinful town of Pottsville.
Though there are rumors of a future adaptation directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (who seems well-suited for the material), the only major screen adaptation to date is Bertrand Tavernier’s Coup de Torchon, which earned ten César Award nominations and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 55th Academy Awards.
Adapted by Tavernier and Jean Aurenche, Coup de Torchon maintains the story’s center around a lazy lawman living with his domineering wife and her overly affectionate and slow-witted, uh, “brother”, in a small town where he’s the constant target of bullies, from those in his own household to a boastful fellow lawman who works several towns away. However, the setting is shifted to the fictional French West African town of Bourkessa on the eve of World War II, and the protagonist is reimagined as Lucien Cordier, played by Philippe Noiret, a two-time César Award-winning actor born in Lille on October 1, 1930.
“Doing nothing is my job, I’m paid for it,” Cordier explains to the two snappily dressed pimps who regularly torment him, adding with some earnestness: “At times—not always—I think I’ve found paradise on Earth.” Continue reading
Legends of the Fall: Brad Pitt’s Tan Leather Car Coat
Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall (1994)
Vitals
Brad Pitt as Tristan Ludlow, tough bootlegger and World War I veteran
Montana, Fall 1925
Film: Legends of the Fall
Release Date: December 23, 1994
Director: Edward Zwick
Costume Designer: Deborah Lynn Scott
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Legends of the Fall may be a biblical title, but the style is autumnal, set amidst the network of the fictional Ludlow ranch in Montana across the first quarter of the 20th century.
Family patriarch William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins) had been a decorated Army colonel before leaving the service in protest of the government’s treatment of Native Americans, raising his sons Alfred (Aidan Quinn), Tristan (Brad Pitt), and Samuel (Henry Thomas) on their remote ranch, where they learn to be the self-sufficient types that can survive bear confrontations… and if they don’t survive them, at least put up enough of a fight to earn “a good death.”
Portraying the tough but troubled Tristan Ludlow provided a breakthrough opportunity for Pitt, continuing the momentum he’d built in a similar role two years earlier in A River Runs Through It, though Tristan is arguably a more rugged character than Paul Maclean. By the mid-1920s, Tristan had seen and done it all, as a cowboy, soldier, big-game hunter, and now a bootlegger whose rumrunning runs him afoul of his own Volstead-voting brother Alfred and his nemeses, the crooked O’Banion brothers. As blood spills on both sides of the conflict, Tristan fears that those he love most are damned to die before him, only to be saved by the bonds of his family. Continue reading
After the Sunset: Pierce Brosnan’s Blue Linen Popover Shirt and Camaro
Pierce Brosnan as Max Burdett in After the Sunset (2004)
Vitals
Pierce Brosnan as Max Burdett, retired(?) jewel thief
The Bahamas, Summer 2004
Film: After the Sunset
Release Date: November 12, 2004
Director: Brett Ratner
Costume Designer: Rita Ryack
Pierce Brosnan’s Costumer: Edward T. Hanley
Background
This summer Car Week focus begins on the 00-7th of July by focusing not on Mr. Bond himself but rather one of Pierce Brosnan’s first prominent movies after hanging up 007’s shoulder holster and tuxedo.
Indeed, Max Burdett’s lifestyle in After the Sunset shares some similarities with how we’ve been presented with James Bond’s retirement: a rugged yet swanky seaside home in the Caribbean with a sweet ride and a stashed handgun to greet unwanted visitors. Continue reading
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