Lumet’s minimalist adaptation of the doomsday best seller is one of the director’s most unappreciated works, overshadowed then and now by the comically apocalyptic Dr. Strangelove. Lumet creates an atmosphere of claustrophobic dread that intensified the jitters of its anxious post-Cuban Missile Crisis audience.
Live television director John Frankenheimer’s third theatrical feature is based on James Leo Herlihy’s dysfunctional family novel. This led directly into Frankenheimer’s amazing run of five consecutive ’60s masterpieces beginning with Birdman of Alcatraz and ending with Seconds. Warren Beatty, only five roles away from Bonnie and Clyde, makes a strong impression.
They don’t make ’em like this anymore: those huge sets and cast of thousands aren’t computer-generated but absolutely real, and those 1964-era actors are a darn sight more interesting than a lot of those we have on hand today.
Although Alfred Hitchcock was working with Ernest Lehman on the script for a project titled The Short Night at the time of Hitch’s death, this light-hearted suspense thriller proved to be his final outing. In retrospect it’s not viewed as equal to his best efforts, but he was 77 when he made it and it’s…
The story of miniaturized medicos set adrift inside the body of an ailing Russian scientist, Richard Fleischer’s preposterously entertaining film has something for everybody, including enormous balloon-shaped sets and the balloon-shaped Raquel Welch in form-fitting scuba gear. Starring old guard Edmond O’Brien and chiseled ladies’ man Stephen Boyd, this high-tech Saturday matinee garnered unusually good…
With Far From Heaven, Todd Haynes produced a Douglas Sirk film for the 21st century. Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid enjoy the quintessential 50s marriage until hubby’s secret life upends their storybook home. Facing a different kind of struggle is Dennis Haysbert whose friendship with Moore riles up the local racists. Ed Lachman’s brilliant photography…
Amy Heckerling’s raucous 1982 high school comedy based on screenwriter Cameron Crowe’s book is a virtual template for the dozens of teen flicks produced in its wake. Co-starring longtime character actor Ray Walston as the strait-laced history teacher engaged in a one-sided war with Spicoli, the modern day Maynard G. Krebs (a reference that may…
Busty broads on motorcycles pummel every guy they encounter in an‚ indelible example of female empowerment, grindhouse style. A trash classic from the mammary-fixated Russ Meyer, former king of the nudies turned sultan of sleaze.
The great Roy Orbison’s movie career goes down in a blaze of bullets in this ill-advised wild west stinkaroo, his first and last “acting” appearance. Roy doesn’t even get a single line reading into this trailer, which is probably for the best. But he did just fine without the movies, thank you very much!
John Huston’s career rebounded after a series of box office duds when this downbeat neo-noir boxing movie became a surprise critical and commercial success. “When you say you want to go to Fat City, it means you want the good life”, explains Leonard Gardner, author of the book and the screenplay. Strikingly shot by Conrad…
The battle of the sexes goes gonzo in Adrian Lyne’s megahit psycho killer (in the view of one sex) revenge fantasy (in the view of the other). It’s kind of a more manipulative remake of Play Misty for Me. The original ironic ending was jettisoned seven months after it was shot when bloodthirsty preview audiences rejected it. This turned the commercial…
Director John Gulager’s monsteriffic splatter film had a most unusual genesis as the winner of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Project Greenlight. Thanks to Damon/Affleck Gulager was able to flesh out his first theatrical film with a distinctive cast including Balthazar Getty, Henry Rollins and Gulager’s dad, Clu.
Fedora, Billy Wilder’s 1978 film about a middle-aged actress living in seclusion, certainly has echoes of Sunset Boulevard and it even stars William Holden as the dowager’s one-time lover. But the movie plays out more like a horror film with overtones of Eyes Without A Face. The film had a tortured history both in pre…
The maestro’s thumb-through of Petronius finds ancient Rome to be as joyless and overheated as modern Rome. Fellini described it as “science fiction of the past”. Much revelry, debauchery and grotesquery ensues in a world that bears less resemblance to history than to Fellini’s subconscious. A gorgeous but deeply pessimistic film. Fellini’s name was later…
In 2002, after a series of high profile, big budget studio thrillers, Brian De Palma returned to his more intimate and provocative roots with this through-the-looking-glass sex caper starring the ravishing Rebecca Romijn and good-natured ladykiller Antonio Banderas. There are more twists and turns to the plot than a game of Mousetrap but, as with many other…
Director Bob Smeaton’s rock ‘n road-trip movie, featuring some of 1970’s preeminent musicians on a five day train tour through Canada, is an essential time capsule of what happened when the swinging sixties made its awkward leap into the unforgiving after-party of the ’70s. There are eye-opening run-ins with hostile fans along the way but…
Renowned for the flying brains and sputtering gore of its final reel, this British sci-fi set in Canada has maintained semi-classic status over the decades despite the fact that it’s actually pretty uneventful.
Kino reaches into the Universal Vault for vintage Paramount and Universal thrillers. This ‘noir’ collection surprises us — it contains one terrific example of the style, newly-hatched and looking very different for its year. The other two titles are in B&W (check), and revolve around murders (check). But if there were a TV quiz show…
Hapless ’50s astronauts land on what we’re told is the 13th moon of Jupiter (which wasn’t discovered until 1974!) and find it’s another planet full of zoftig women who like to dance to Borodin’s Polovtian Dances at the drop of a needle. The popular planet-of-pulchritude formula seems to have originated with Abbott & Costello Go…
As battle-scarred John Rambo, star and screenwriter Sylvester Stallone uses the post war traumas of real-life war veterans as fuel for a jingoistic revenge fantasy in the mode of Death Wish and Walking Tall. Efficiently directed by Ted Kotcheff (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, North Dallas Forty), 1982’s First Blood is the quintessential Reagan era…
Victorian astronauts find Ray Harryhausen-animated life on the moon in this charming semi-spoof adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel, which adds a key ingredient Wells left out: love interest Martha Hyer. Set visitor Peter Finch appears in a cameo that came about when a minor player didn’t show up.
A comic crime caper stuffed with eccentric supporting characters, A FISH CALLED WANDA is in the best tradition of British comedies like THE LAVENDER HILL MOB. That should be no surprise because the director, Charles Crichton, is responsible for both. Crichton’s amazing career began in the thirties as an editor on THINGS TO COME and…
Survivors of an atomic blast fight for survival in a bleak, irradiated world. Radio pioneer Arch Oboler was the first filmmaker to seriously approach the concept of a post apocalyptic society. It’s an earnest, arty low budget indie that occasionally skirts pretentiousness, but it’s passionately sincere and progressive for the period.
Third of Nigel Kneale’s visionary Quatermass features adapted from his groundbreaking BBC serials, this one dispenses with Hammer’s ’50s reliance on transplanted US stars and took a decade to make it into production. Although somewhat cribbed from ideas in Arthur C Clarke’s “Childhood’s End”, it’s still one of the most challenging and intelligent sci-fi movies…
Only the anything-goes era of the 1970s could have produced this porno spoof of the ’30s Buster Crabbe serials. Obviously made on a shoestring, but the special fx are surprisingly clever–the people who made this clearly love the originals. It’s odd to see legit actor John Hoyt among the veteran porn cast.
The second in a trilogy about the terrors of growing up, writer/director John Duigan’s Flirting is a finely tuned and complex piece of work about teen angst circa 1965. With a stellar cast led by Noah Taylor, it features Naomi Watts in a small part and Nicole Kidman just on the cusp of her reign…