Blog

THE FOVC GUIDE TO THE DRIVE-IN MOVIE PART 2: AIP AND 13 NOTABLE DRIVE-IN MOVIE MASTERS

Of all the companies that produced pictures primarily for the drive-in market, none did so with as much brio or thrived because…

THE FOVC GUIDE TO THE DRIVE-IN MOVIE, PART 1: A BRIEF HISTORY

It might seem that celebrating the drive-in movie season during the dog days of August is a celebration that is coming about…

Tale of Tales

It's strange, it's different, and I can see why it wasn't a theatrical hit... but Matteo Garrone's superb telling of three very…

Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon

Troubling fact: the great director Otto Preminger's worst film is not Skidoo. Three physical misfits form an alternative family as a defense…

Love Me or Leave Me

MGM's show is a surprising powerhouse musical bio about the personality clash between an ambitious singer and the powerful enabler who wants…

A Taste of Honey

Road House (1948)

ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS (1958)

The sound of an electric pencil sharpener masks the crack of a shot that initiates what might have been the perfect murder…

Microwave Massacre

'Worst Movie Ever?'   No way. But neither is Wayne Berwick and comic Jackie Vernon's tacky cannibalism tale a piece of art.…

The Spiders (1919)

When Fritz Lang began in film he was a better writer than director. This lavish two-part thriller sees him concocting a multi-genre…

Ingrid Bergman In Her Own Words

Chandu the Magician

Hissable villain Bela Lugosi is in denial --- no, actually star Edmund Lowe is in the Nile, deep-sixed in a sunken sarcophagus.…

These Three

Radical changes were required to adapt Lillian Hellman's Broadway play for post-Code Hollywood, to eradicate a theme that in 1934 was entirely…

Woman in the Dunes

BLOOD SIMPLE, SWEET CHARLOTTE, SUICIDE SQUAD AND OTHER SCATTERED SHOTS AND SHORT ENDS

I’ve been back from my Oregon vacation for a couple of weeks now, and though the getaway was a good and necessary…

Destiny

Death doesn't take a holiday in this, the granddaddy of movies about the woeful duties of the Grim Reaper. Fritz Lang's heavy-duty…

Pioneers of African-American Cinema

It's arrived -- thanks in part to a successful Kickstarter campaign, this nearly comprehensive compendium of American 'Race Films' is here in…

Betrayed

Costa-Gavras sets his focus on right-wing political terror in the American heartland, where FBI agent Debra Winger finds farmer Tom Berenger at…

A Touch of Zen

A Taiwanese wuxia masterpiece from director King Hu: three hours of suspense, visual beauty and amazing action scenes. A beautiful mystery woman…

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Liz Taylor scorches the screen (as least as much as it could be scorched in 1958) in a watered-down yet still potent…

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension

The new branded line Shout Selects chooses Buckaroo for special-special edition treatment, with a long making-of docu just like the ones from…

The Gang’s All Here

Wonderful isn't a good enough word to describe this joyful, funny and visually intoxicating Alice Faye musical by Busby Berkeley. Decades later…

Muriel, or The Time of Return

Alain Resnais' deceptively conventional drama is really about interpersonal dynamics: lives lived in the here and now are really anchored in events…

Modesty Blaise

Joseph Losey didn't normally make trendy, lighthearted genre films, and in this SuperSpy epic we find out why -- the impressive production…

‘Neath Arizona Skies

This early John Wayne oater displays the natural star quality and winning personality that sustained him through the 1930s -- it's a…

Miss Sadie Thompson

Rita Hayworth in 3-D, in a hot story that was acceptable for 1925 and 1932, but too racy for repressed 1953. On…