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…

Also known as Smokey and the Bandit Part 3, the third entry into the Burt Reynolds/Jackie Gleason good-old-boy car comedies has everything but Burt Reynolds. A beleaguered production from the get go, the plan was for Gleason to take over the Reynolds role in a dual role alongside his bumptious character, Sheriff Buford T. Justice. That…

Two decades after its release, society may have finally caught up with this 1992 comedy about conspiracy theorists, computer hackers and the currently topical NSA. With a uniquely quirky cast (including Ben Kingsley, Sidney Poitier and Dan Aykroyd) supporting star Robert Redford, this high tech caper film was, unsurprisingly, a box office success. The playfully…

Director Bong Joon-ho’s 2013 follow-up to his cult-fave The Host was an across-the-board critical hit but suffered from its limited release in art-house theaters. The film’s action is entirely relegated to the interior of a massive train inhabited by the last remaining survivors of earth, the result of a climate change experiment gone tragically wrong….

Robert Harling and Andrew Bergman wrote the super-smart script for this meta-comedy about the soap opera drama behind a soap opera drama. Directed by Michael Hoffman, the cast features Sally Field as a fading afternoon star and Cathy Moriarty as her unscrupulous rival – their character’s names, “Celeste Talbert” and “Montana Moorehead” are just more…

Wartime phenomena Bud and Lou at the height of their fame in one of their better-received vehicles, which happens to incorporate one of their best vaudeville reclaimations, the “Floogle Street” routine, here rechristened Bagel Street, but given short shrift in the trailer.

The box office success of From Here to Eternity, adapted from the James Jones best-seller, paved the way for this 1958 film based on the author’s follow-up novel. It’s another example of director Vincente Minnelli’s seemingly effortless mastery of the medium, here using the expansive Cinemascope lens to frame an intimate small-town tragedy (He claimed…

Under the radar comedy western from director Andrew McLaglen starring Dean Martin, Brian Keith and a surrealistic supporting cast including Honor Blackman, Ben Johnson and football star/announcer Merlin Olsen. The convoluted farce focuses on the last hurrah of bandit Joe Baker (Dino) before he settles down to married life.

This black comedy has fallen by the wayside since its release in 1970 and considering its rich pedigree, it deserves another look. Directed by Harold Prince and written by Hugh Wheeler, Angela Lansbury and Michael York play two social climbers ready to marry or murder anyone to get what they want. John Simon hated the film,…