A high-flying crowd pleaser that only the studio system could manufacture, MGM’s Test Pilot was directed by Victor Fleming, written by Howard Hawks, and starred the can’t-miss trio of Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, and Spencer Tracy. Gable plays a reckless flyboy, Loy his down-home  sweetheart, and Tracy his true-blue pal. The airborne pyrotechnics and earthbound…

Hallucinatory sci-fi from director Shinya Tsukamoto who takes David Cronenberg’s body-horror themes to their illogical/logical conclusion. Shot on 16mm, Tsukamoto’s 1989 cult fave is a frenetic nightmare allegory of a roboticized society in which people consume, inject and otherwise merge with scrap metal and other household appliances. For those who think “sex toy” but say “power…

Gritty, visceral and intensely disturbing, Tobe Hooper’s Nixon-era magnum opus achieves almost all its power‚ through suggestion and indirection. Nevertheless it was banned and censored throughout the world. Art director‚ Robert Burns practically earns auteur status himself for his all-encompassing graveyard atmosphere.‚ Followed by three remakes and a sequel, videogame and comic books.

Set in the New Hebrides during World War II, James A. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific inspired the sweepingly romantic stage and film versions of South Pacific—his best-selling The Bridges at Toko-Ri resulted in a far grimmer portrayal of war directed by Mark Robson. William Holden plays a rebellious navy aviator flying missions over North…

Director Philippe De Broca (King of Hearts) directed this spy spoof at the apex of Bondmania in 1964 and transformed easy-going art-house favorite Jean-Paul Belmondo into a box office mega-star. Featuring a fast-paced globe-trotting chase for an Amazonian statue, That Man From Rio is more Indiana Jones than James Bond but French audiences didn’t care, making it…

In what could be another entry in “Movies You Never Heard Of”, Sig Shore’s musicalized drama tells the story of a funk band and their meteoric rise up the charts. Harvey Keitel plays their producer and Earth, Wind, and Fire do double duty—as actors and as film composers. The movie dropped off the radar but…

Although only sparsely released theatrically in the United States, the recently deceased director Liu Chia-Liang’s 1978 Hong Kong kung fu epic is widely considered a highpoint in the evolution of the genre. Its official mainstream release came on dvd in 2000 under the title Shaolin Master Killer.

Truffaut’s portrait of a young misfit at war with his school, his family and himself, is never sentimental but always heartrending – in the words of Godard, “rigorous and tender.” The movie was the first of four films featuring Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine Doinel who, over the course of 20 years, grew from beleaguered adolescent to jaded roué.

Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn never forgave producer Stanley Kramer for this early Dr. Suess fantasy that was supposed to be another Wizard of Oz but turned out more like Willie Wonka as directed by Liberace. One of the stranger major studio “family” films, with subtexts you just don’t wanna know about. Seuss once claimed…

A generation of baby boomers were forever enchanted by a passel of fabulous monsters in this now-classic fantasy hit. After years of working on Sam Katzman B pictures, FX genius Ray Harryhausen and his producer Charles Schneer moved up the ladder with a comparatively larger budget but still economical Arabian Nights adventure whose sleeper success spawned another…

George Cukor’s bittersweet remembrance of actress Ruth Gordon’s determination to become an actress showcases one of Spencer Tracy’s most acclaimed performances as her diamond-in-the-rough father. Jean Simmons plays the 17 year-old Gordon and gangly Anthony Perkins makes his film debut as her boyfriend.

It was up to Parasite to knock Kim Han-min’s epic war film off the top of the list of box champions in South Korea. Choi Min-sik stars as Yi Sun-sin, the legendary Admiral who commandeered 12 naval vessels against a Japanese fleet that numbered 333 – and won.

Cinematically, notorious 18th century liar Munchausen’s tall tales date back to 1911, but received their most spectacular treatment in Terry Gilliam’s big budget boxoffice fiasco, which followed an elaborate Nazi-era adaptation and Karel Zeman’s brilliant 1961 combo of animation and live action. Intentionally buried by its Gilliam-averse US distributor, it’s a technical marvel that fared very well critically,…

Frank Tashlin’s tongue-in-cheek adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The A.B.C. Murders is a very curious curiosity, with Tony Randall bringing more than a touch of Inspector Clouseau to the role of the brilliant Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. Zaftig Anita Ekberg further tips the scales towards pure farce—it is a Tashlin film after all—but even with Margaret…

What begins as a contemporary screwball comedy turns into a dark gangland saga. Isabelle Huppert plays the former convent girl who earns her living writing porn and Martin Donovan is Thomas, a hapless accountant with amnesia who harbors a secret he doesn’t remember till it’s too late. Hal Hartley directed from his own screenplay.

Canadian born Sidney J. Furie directed this lightweight but entertaining horse opera right after his box office success with The Ipcress File in 1965. Marlon Brando plays a rancher on the trail of his stolen Appaloosa and John Saxon (a Golden Globe nominee) is Chuy Medina, the scurvy bandito who abducted the pony. Anjanette Comer…

Still playing midnight shows at theaters across the country after 35 years, this astounding futuristic relic from those wacky guys at Cannon Films has become one of the most popular, even beloved stinkaroos of all time, the guiltiest of guilty pleasures. There really are no words, but Josh Olson gives it a shot anyway.

From Fail Safe to Dr. Strangelove, Hollywood’s reaction to the atomic bomb has veered between grim horror and black comedy; Mickey Rooney’s The Atomic Kid considers our nuclear future with the gravitas of a Bowery Boys movie. Rooney plays an unlucky schmoe trapped in an atomic blast and, instead of gaining extraordinary powers or shooting up 50 feet, he’s merely coerced…

One of Vincente Minnelli’s best is this glamorous ‘Hollywood Looks At Hollywood’ exposé of sin and conniving among the actors, directors and producers that make Quality Entertainment for us unglamorous nobodies. It’s overstated and often grossly overacted (Kirk Douglas, front and center!) but still carries a grandiose charm. Lana Turner gets to play an idealized…

True to its word, Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and The Beautiful is full of bad, beautiful people. Baddest of all is Kirk Douglas as a two-faced director who’ll walk over anyone or anything to get what he wants. Those walked upon include a ravishing Lana Turner, Dick Powell as an unassuming novelist, and Walter Pidgeon…

Michael Ritchie’s 1976 comedy about a squad of underachieving Little Leaguers and their boozing coach (played by a rumpled Walter Matthau) is a bracing antidote to most of today’s carefully vetted family-friendly feel good films. Ritchie’s uniquely warmhearted but unsentimental take on his crew of misfits allows even the most peripheral of characters their own…

By the time Swedish wrestler and best-selling Halloween mask Tor Johnson made this, his all-time worst picture, his career was behind him and the days of Ed Wood must have looked like Eden. The longest 54 minutes in movies.

There’s a reason presidential elections happen so soon after Halloween; they’re their own kind of horror show. The ghouls in Gore Vidal’s The Best Man aren’t typical monsters though, they’re political operatives. Henry Fonda is a conflicted but honorable candidate facing off against the Prince of Darkness, Cliff Robertson, a phony populist willing to break…

Joan Crawford has one of her better roles of the decade in this popular ensemble piece based on Rona Jaffe’s best seller. Although her part was reduced to some seven minutes in editing, eliminating a reportedly memorable drunk scene, Crawford managed to impress even among the diverse and generally younger cast of Fox contractees. A…

Homicide cop Glenn Ford visits destruction on every woman he meets while avenging the murder of his wife. Fritz Lang’s noirish classic is tough, cynical and operates from the premise that most big cities are run by crime syndicates, a popular theme in contemporary thrillers like The Enforcer, The Big Combo and The Phenix City…

Conceived in the 1950s, Sam Fuller’s fine war film The Big Red One didn’t make it to the screen until 1980, yet it has the same stoic vision and brass-knuckled poetry of the director’s best early work. Lee Marvin plays a soldier fighting a World War alongside his own demons. With a fine supporting cast…