Rollercoaster, director James Goldstone’s disaster thriller about a mad bomber’s plot to destroy an amusement park, was the third film presented in the seat-shaking audio process known as Sensesurround. Though it stars such personable actors as George Segal and Richard Widmark and boasts some spectacular action scenes, the film was only a modest success, perhaps due…
John Flynn (The Outfit) was the director, but writer Paul Schrader’s Taxi Driver sensibilities seem to dominate this unjustifiably obscure, violent entry in the betrayed-Vietnam-vet sweepstakes, which is not on DVD and deserves to be better known.
“The most erotic thing in their world was money”. Imagine anyone trying to make a serious expose of the international banking business today! Even in 1981 nobody was interested. Considered a notorious turkey in its day, this financial conspiracy thriller looks positively prescient now. Not among director Alan Pakula’s best-realized works, but certainly deserving…
In a plot reminiscent of W.C. Fields’ The Old Fashioned Way, Groucho plays a down on his luck theatrical producer saddled with a stage full of hungry actors. Adapted from the 1937 broadway hit, this was the Marx Brothers’ first film not tailored specifically to their characters. The movie co-stars Lucille Ball and a very young…
Filmed plays don’t get much more interesting than this. For years Hitchcock’s legendary long-take experiment was a hard film to see, but it’s become more available in recent years. This was the first time the studio was contractually obligated to bill one of his films with the “Alfred Hitchcock’s” possessory credit.
William Castle’s greatest movie– because it was directed by Roman Polanski! May be the finest book to film adaptation ever, brilliant in every detail. Naturally, it’s slated to be remade–but we dunno who’d be foolish enough to try and improve on it.
Roman Polanski’s sinister and sophisticated adaptation of Ira Levin’s novel is also one of the most darkly comic films ever made, in this case personified by Ruth Gordon as the busybody neighbor of poor, paranoid Rosemary who finds out too late that the funny, kaffeeklatsching blue-hair next door is a dyed-in-the-wool satanist. Polanski insisted on keeping…
Bertrand Tavernier’s 1986 musical drama is based on the life of the saxophonist Lester Young, played by the great bebop artist Dexter Gordon as a struggling band man named Dale Turner. Turner’s highs and lows are reflected in the wonderful music on the soundtrack including Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. Gordon is joined by other real…
Wes Anderson’s absurdist family comedy features a jam-packed cast full of eccentrics that recall the heyday of Preston Sturges. Anderson’s deadpan mannerist approach seems to bring out the best in his eclectic cast including Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray and Gene Hackman as Royal Tenenbaum, the trouble-making patriarch who sets the story in motion. Fans of…
An out-of-nowhere global hit that makes the Energizer Bunny look lazy, S. S. Rajamouli’s 2022 film is a whirling dervish of a movie powered by music, mythology, and wall to wall special effects. N. T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan play two enemies who become fast friends in their search for a kidnapped child….
Piper Laurie, still flush with her success in 1976’s Carrie, is mother to another supernatural trouble-child in this 1977 possession potboiler from director Curtis Harrington (Night Tide). Laurie plays the titular Ruby whose deaf-mute daughter begins to show signs that her personality has been taken over by the spirit of her dead father, a sleaze-ball…
This was Matt Dillon’s third featured role in a film based on an S.E. Hinton novel, shot back-to-back by Francis Coppola immediately after finishing The Outsiders, which shares much the same cast and crew. What was viewed as its self-indulgent art-house aura turned off audiences and critics, but modern viewers have begun to warm up…
2010’s Unstoppable had a decades-earlier precedent. Andre Konchalovsky’s dynamic thriller took a long time to make it to the screen, but when it did (under the auspices of Cannon Releasing, no less) it rocked. Rod Lurie explains its surprising origins.
No, this isn’t the (not really very famous either) Billy Crystal comedy from 1986, but the very underrated and virtually unknown hyper-real 2006 thriller from director Wayne Kramer set in New Jersey but shot in Prague. It’s one of many such currently obscure action films that have yet to penetrate the dwindling home video market due to a plethora…
The success of Dr. No proved to be no fluke when its more adventurous followup became one of the biggest international box office hits of the decade and set in motion a worldwide avalanche of 007 imitations. John F. Kennedy’s favorite spy went on to spearhead the longest lasting movie franchise in history, though Kennedy…
Director Alexander Sokurov’s camera leads us through the rooms of Russia’s Hermitage Museum in a single unbroken Steadicam shot for 96 minutes. The effect grows increasingly hypnotic as it becomes apparent that this non-stop march is in fact an escape through time with the onscreen narrator (Sergey Dreyden) playing the time-traveler, rubbing elbows with the…
Alan Arkin made his film debut as a Soviet submarine commander who runs aground off the coast of a rustic New England island that thinks it’s being invaded. The large ensemble cast recalls It’s a Mad Mad etc. World (also written by William Rose), but the story is more nuanced and satirical under the direction…
Blake Edwards’ film is best remembered as “Mary Poppins Gets Naked” but Julie Andrews’ toplessness aside, this 1981 satire is one of the most scathing critiques of Hollywood in movie history and features a fearless band of actors who know where all the bodies were buried. Among those classic stars who threw caution to the…
Look up “sordid” in the dictionary and you’ll see a picture from William Wellman’s Safe in Hell next to it. A New Orleans prostitute accused of murdering her pimp escapes to a Caribbean island where she encounters something far worse than a Louisiana jail. Dorothy Mackaill is the unlucky hooker and Morgan Wallace plays her…
The feel-bad movie of all time. Director Pier Paolo Pasolini updated the Marquis de Sade’s scandalous The 120 Days of Sodom from 18th century France to Fascist-era Italy, where the degradation of a group of teenagers serves as a political metaphor. Banned for years throughout the world, it calls into question the entire concept of…
Ken Russell’s shoestring production consists primarily of a spiritedly ribald performance of Oscar Wilde’s banned 1893 play Salome as enacted for the author by an enterprising troupe of prostitutes in his favorite brothel. Dan Ireland shares some of the secrets behind one of the director’s least-known films.
This 1968 film is just one in an ignoble line of un-hip hipster comedies of the late 60’s and early 70’s that included such clueless farragoes as Otto Preminger’s Skidoo and Lee Katzin’s The Phynx. Past-their-prime lotharios Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford star as club owners who back into a murder mystery and set…
Sampo Blu ray Deaf Crocodile/Vinegar Syndrome 1959 / 2:35:1 / 91 Min. Starring Anna Orochko, Andris Ošiņš, Eve Kivi Written by Väinö Kaukonen, Viktor Vitkovich, Grigori Yagdfeld Directed by Aleksandr Ptushko Mosfilm’s Sampo, a Russian fantasy from 1959, and Paramount’s White Christmas, a Yuletide bauble released in 1954, were both state of the art…
Roadshow epics were going the way of the dinosaur by the time Robert Wise’s The Sand Pebbles appeared in 1966, particularly in the wake of the small films (like that year’s Alfie and Georgy Girl) that were speaking to younger ticket-buyers in a way the stodgy blockbusters were not. More’s the pity because Wise’s film,…
This 1936 production is the second film to have been based on Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 The Maltese Falcon and although the names have been changed, the crimes remain the same… though this time the object of interest is not a jewel-encrusted falcon but a ram’s head filled with gems. Warner Bros. assigned Bette Davis to this right after The Petrified Forest and…
Ken Russell’s 1972 bio-pic about the fiery french sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (played by Scott Antony) whose brief and bright career positioned him as an important figure in the Cubist movement. There’s nothing cube-like about ravishing co-star Helen Mirren whose long and distinguished career was just beginning to take off. Featuring the venerable Michael Gough as…