The title sounds like a typically nihilistic Italian spaghetti western but it’s really a typically nihilistic Italian crime thriller. Directed by Fernando Di Leo, the action revolves around a cop who is happy dabbling in bribery until the bodies begin to pile up. A box office hit in its homeland, the movie benefits from some…

Alan Parker’s emotionally charged portrait of a collapsing marriage showcases the late Diane Keaton and Albert Finney in two of the finest performances of their careers. Too realistic and downbeat to be a wide success in its day, it endures as an uncompromising depiction of human frailty. Gifted child actress Dana Hill passed away prematurely…

The Duke rides into the the sunset forever with a moving performance as a dying gunfighter in his final film, surrounded by a top-notch cast and crew.

After the unexpected success of 1992’s The Player, Altman directed one of his most acclaimed films, an intimate epic that features 22 separate characters adrift in the city of Angels. The massive cast features everyone from Julianne Moore and Tim Robbins to Lily Tomlin and Tom Waits. Altman and Frank Barhydt wrote the screenplay based…

MGM’s remake of the grand musical can’t be ignored — the restored transfer is stunning, demonstrating the studio’s technical skill at full tilt. There are good aspects to this version, even if it’s mostly a missed opportunity more notable for production backstories than for itself. It’s Kathryn Grayson’s high water mark at MGM, and Howard…

Roger Ebert called Alex Cox’s unexpectedly romantic dissection of the destructive relationship between Sid Vicious and Cloe Webb “Punk Rock’s Romeo and Juliet”. Johnny Rotten (aka John Lydon) was no fan of the film, claiming he’d been intentionally bypassed and that the movie was “the lowest form of life”. The soundtrack contains no songs by…

Quintessential ’40s leading man Dana Andrews excels in perhaps his finest performance as another brutal cop who can’t control himself (shades of Robert Ryan and Kirk Douglas!) in Otto Preminger’s gripping, corrosive noir classic–the flip side of the sensitive cop Andrews played for him in Laura.

Jonathan Demme’s elegantly terrifying thriller was one of those rare beasts capable of satisfying both the recherché leanings of the Academy as well as the wild and wooly demands of grindhouse audiences. Anthony Hopkins is hypnotic as Hannibal Lector, the erudite cannibal with a taste for Chianti, and Jodie Foster is masterful as Clarice Starling, the…

Mel Brooks’ affectionate 1976 tribute to silent films is oddly subdued (for a Mel Brooks film) though the good-natured comedy still contains plenty of chuckles if not outright belly laughs. By deciding to keep his actors completely silent, Brooks lost much of the raucous verbal humor that propels so much of his best work. With…

Stephen Bochco and Michael Cimino were among the writers of FX wizard Doug Trumbull’s melancholy 1971 space odyssey, which has taken on belated luster in our globally steam-heated present. One of Bruce Dern’s finest hours.

Close to perfection. Directors Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly assemble a peerless cast and crew to satirize and celebrate Hollywood. Set at the moment when sound came to motion pictures and turned the industry upside down (sending more than a few actors to the unemployment line), 1952’s Singin’ In The Rain seamlessly integrates its songs…

Director Douglas Hickox (Theatre of Blood) worked his way up from assistant director to have a brief run of commercial hits in the mid-70s. This is probably his most nihilistic project, a bleak, violent thriller in the vein of Get Carter and Villain. Oliver Reed startles as the crazed convict who breaks prison to kill…

Director Lance Mungia’s 1998 cult item, a “post-apocalyptic musical satire”, is a bracing mashup produced with style and substance. With nods to Dr. Strangelove, The Road Warrior, and Elvis himself, this rock and roll fantasia stars Jeffrey Falcon who plays a Buddy Holly-like guitarist with a special talent for swordplay. Here’s The Movies That Made Me…

Former Chicago ad man John Hughes parlayed several print and script assignments for the National Lampoon into a writer/director gig on this, the first of a veritable onslaught of teen angst comedies that gave the world The Brat Pack, a group of young actors who went on to careers of varied length after hitting it…

John Hughes’ breakthrough writing-directing hit still carries a glow (a very square, safe glow) that defuses its rougher edges, making it one of the best of ’80s Teen comedies. Even the savvy Soraya Roberts cuts it some slack, thanks to the authentic presence and fine performance of Molly Ringwald. Hughes’ amusing script comes up with…

Roger Corman recalls the frigid details of shooting this indie war picture for his non-union production company The Filmgroup on location in snowbound Deadwood, South Dakota. Shot back-to-back with The Beast from Haunted Cave, both from scripts by Corman warhorse Charles B. Griffith.

Otto Preminger’s legendary disaster was also Groucho Marx’s last movie, and he’s awful in it. The director’s characteristic browbeating probably didn’t help him much. Like Roger Corman, Preminger experimented with LSD to make this movie, but a few screenings of this hopelessly clueless effort could fund another ten years of “Just Say NO” propaganda. As…

Coproducer James Garner channels his winning Maverick persona as a pre-Civil War con man whose partner Louis Gossett Jr. poses as his slave. The two travel around “selling” Gossett to various slaveholders, then spring him and move on to the next mark. It’s a comedy, but a fairly serious-minded one. The familiar backlot and supporting…

Probably the most accomplished of the non-omnibus Amicus horror pix. Dedicated occult collector Peter Cushing scores a coup – the skull of the Marquis deSade. But it doesn’t make him –or anyone else–very happy!

In the great tradition of hockey comedies–wait, is there a tradition of hockey comedies? Anyway, this one was seriously undervalued in 1977 and is viewed today as a landmark in cynical sports humor as well as wall-to-wall profanity. Full of quotable dialog. A locker room favorite.

Long considered to be unfilmable, Kurt Vonnegut’s time-tripping 1969 novel was tamed for the screen by writer Stephen Geller and director George Roy Hill, who captured the essence of the book without being entirely faithful to it. Vonnegut said he would “drool and cackle” each time he watched the film, which he was very pleased…

For his first original screenplay Stephen King created the titular creatures of Sleepwalkers, twilight monsters similar to vampires and werewolves who require the life force of virgins to survive. TFH Guru Mick Garris’s first major studio movie features cameos from Clive Barker, Tobe Hooper, John Landis, Joe Dante, Mark Hamill and Stephen King himself.

Former editor Amy Holden Jones reveals a saga that could only have taken place in the bygone world of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, and resulted in her first directorial assignment– a girls-in-jeopardy horror picture that led to a career as a successful Hollywood screenwriter. Sequels ensued. Read all about “20 Things We Learned from…

François Truffaut followed up the tragic The Story of Adele H with this sunny comedy about childhood innocence and resiliency (to show just how resilient, one baby falls out a window and merely bounces harmlessly off the bushes below). Truffaut worked with a stripped down script to allow for more improvisation from his young cast….

The bromide is that satire is what closes on Saturday night, and the box office reception to Michael Ritchie’s expose of small town beauty pageants certainly bears that out. The American Dream comes in for a drubbing, but Richie and screenwriter Jerry Belson have such affection for their characters that it’s uplifting rather than a…

Smile, Michael Ritchie’s aptly named 1975 film, takes aim at American beauty pageants and the sunnily eager contestants, their ravenous parents and long suffering chaperones. But the real reason to smile is Bruce Dern’s funny and touching performance as Big Bob Freelander, head judge of the contest and sometime used car dealer. Once again Ritchie…