Paul Thomas Anderson’s breakthrough film has one of the more unusual storylines for cinematic success: a decades-spanning tale of a Valley boy who strikes it rich (for a while) in the then-thriving ’70s porn industry. Anderson’s empathic style makes this motley crew of sex workers positively endearing. The film follows a top-notch cast headed by…

MGM head Dore Schary essentially co-opted one of Anthony Mann’s Eagle-Lion projects, hiring Mann, writer John Higgins and the great cinematographer John Alton away from the low budget factory and giving them more money to work‚ with. As‚ in their earlier T-Men, government agents infiltrate a crime ring, this time‚ one exploiting migrant farm workers….

Tom Laughlin’s dry run for his indie smash Billy Jack introduces the character as a part-Native American Vietnam vet who cleans out a townful of psychotic bikers. Raping, pillaging and karate moves ensue. Costar Elizabeth James wrote the screenplay.

A black comedy with an extremely ironic title, this 1971 film was directed by Ivan Passer and stars George Segal as a drug addict who calls Times Square his home. The supporting cast is reason enough to see it: Paula Prentiss as Segal’s wife, Karen Black as his sometime girlfriend, and Robert De Niro as…

The oft-told tale of the uptight neurotic redeemed by a carefree nonconformist gets a facelift thanks to director Tom DiCillo and star John Turturro. Turturro plays a burnt-out worker bee who gets a new lease on life courtesy of a free spirit played by Sam Rockwell. The quirky story is fleshed out by a quirkier…

Martin Scorsese’s first Hollywood movie, for Roger Corman and AIP, was maligned by curmudgeons like the star of Devil’s Angels, but it already shows some of the dynamic style he would bring to his next breakthrough picture, Mean Streets. The blood-soaked climax is vintage Scorsese.

Martin Scorsese’s second feature assignment was produced by Julie Corman, following AIP’s success with Bloody Mama and Dillinger. It’s a kissing cousin to Bonnie and Clyde with mythic overtones of The Grapes of Wrath; the true story of two depression era train robbers whose violent exploits underscore the plight of railroad workers in the early 1930’s. David Carradine’s Union firebrand seems…

Harlan Ellison’s Nebula-winning post-WW IV sci-fi novella is transferred to the the screen by longtime character player-turned-director L.Q. Jones, who never directed another film despite its instant-cult hit status. It’s hard to imagine this one getting produced in any era but the 1970s.

One of Alexander Mackendrick’s lesser known efforts, this hard-luck family movie shot in Africa under the title Sammy Going South existed in several versions. The original 129 minute‚ cut is‚ seemingly lost, but‚ a 119 minute one has surfaced on British DVD. The trailer is for Paramount’s‚ extensively reworked US release, which has several points…

Spring break in Fort Lauderdale got a huge publicity boost from this 1960 MGM musical, notable as the film debut of the fabulous Paula Prentiss. It’s a proto-New World Picture, a four-girl adventure with a healthy emphasis (bold for the times) on S-E-X, or what Preston Sturges used to refer to as “Topic A”.

Written while in film school, the late John Singleton’s debut film was a game-changing hit for the movie industry. The ambitious storyline spans a generation and stars an electric band of actors and musicians including Ice Cube, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Laurence Fishburne. It packs a lasting punch because Singleton sticks with what he knows,…

Director Adam Simon’s 1990 psychological horror film is notable for its screenplay by Twilight Zone vet Charles Beaumont, filmed 23 years after his death. The movie, with its unique mix of elements from Donovan’s Brain and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, features a strong cast with Bill Pullman as a potentially schizophrenic brain surgeon and…

Gregory Peck tracks down the gang of varmints who murdered his wife in Henry King’s tough-minded western morality play. It’s no Ox-Bow Incident, but it’s well cast and produced, with only Fox contractee Joan Collins seeming a bit out of place.

Blake Edwards’ adaptation of Truman Capote’s bittersweet novella was a big hit in 1961 and garnered several Oscar nominations. The film’s title sequence, with “escort girl” Audrey Hepburn strolling the deserted sidewalks of New York while serenaded by Henry Mancini’s Moon River, is one of the most memorable moments in movie history. Also memorable, unhappily, is Mickey Rooney’s outrageously un-PC…

Film critic Jean-Luc Godard’s first feature directorial outing, based on a concept by Francois Truffaut, followed The 400 Blows and Hiroshima Mon Amour‚ as a pillar of the French New Wave. Shooting on the run without permits, sound equipment or much in the way of lights, Godard rewrote and improvised anew each day. Star Jean…

Quentin Tarantino loved Jim McBride’s remake of Godard’s seminal new wave film, even though it recalls the glossy facades of star Richard Gere’s American Gigolo more than the gritty black and white of that French director’s kinetic masterpiece. The plot is more Tarantianian than Godard as well, with Gere as a casual thief obsessed with comic books…

Robert Altman followed up the sleeper success of M*A*S*H with an off-kilter avian fantasy set inside the Houston Astrodome by the writer of Skiddoo! It’s a nascent gathering of many of the principal talents who would populate Altman’s triumphs and tragedies over the next decades. Shelley Duvall’s post-barfing kissing scene is a highlight.

“A blonde beauty and a savage beast alone in the jungle! Her clothes torn away screaming in terror! Her marriage vows were more than fulfilled!” Get the picture? Intentions were initially somewhat higher for this ten-day jungle potboiler from the producer of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. A pretty good cast (including a very young and awkward…

David Lean’s 2 hour and 41 minute war drama was a box office smash in 1957, beloved not only by critics but World War II vets as well, regardless of the fact that its hero, played by Alec Guiness, is in fact an anti-hero, a by-the-book pedant whose obsession with military protocol only succeeds in…

After Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid was mutilated by MGM, Sam Peckinpah regrouped with this raw, violent and blackly comic compendium of all the director’s familiar themes. Possibly Warren Oates’ best performance, and arguably Peckinpah’s most personal –and bizarre–project. A must-see.

One of Woody Allen’s most endearing projects, full of affection for broken-down vaudevillians and dead-end-career comics, not to mention nostalgia for a lost world of New York show biz. Perhaps Mia Farrow’s most charming performance. The framing device with the table full of real life comedians at the Carnegie Deli is inspired.

Set in 1963, Ang Lee’s acclaimed multi-award winning drama about a rodeo cowboy and a ranch hand who fall in love gave new meaning to the word cowpoke. By turns solemn and romantic, it proved a breakthrough movie in widening tolerance and appreciation for the varied ways of the human heart. Memorable music score by…

This one states the theme for much of Cronenberg’s output in the eighties: what’s bred in the bone will out in the flesh (and there’s nothing we can do about it). Psychotherapist Oliver Reed enables his patients to physically mutate in response to their own repressed rage. Samantha Eggar is the unlucky mom who spawns…

Sidney Poitier stars as a mysterious traveler who arrives on the scene whenever someone is about to die. His recent appearance in a small Alabama town during a labor dispute spurs the action in this 1971 film directed by long-time television director James Goldstone. Will Geer co-stars as the local doctor with suspicions of the…

Brotherhood of the Wolf, a big-budget werewolf thriller set during the French Revolution, is like a romance novel written by Stephen King. A sumptuous production by any account, the film stars Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci with special effects from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.

The great supporting cast alone (Sam Levene, Jeff Corey,Jay C. Flippen, Sir Lancelot and the first of many pairings of John Hoyt and Whit Bissell) would make Jules Dassin’s prison pic a keeper, but as written by Richard Brooks it’s a tough, incisive and influential genre piece. Hume Cronyn’s career highlight as the sadistic Warden…