Some Italian thrillers post-1968 became very political. Marco Bellocchio’s outright accusation against the power elite of Milan all but drops the thriller aspect to concentrate on exposing the evil of partisan media manipulation. Sound familiar? Scheming newspaper editor Gian Maria Volontè leverages a sex murder to smear the left and throw an election. With police…
Abraham Polonsky and Robert Rossen’s ringside classic is a key film noir and a key social issue film; John Garfield and Lilli Palmer make big impressions with the aid of Anne Revere, Canada Lee, Lloyd Gough, William Conrad and Joseph Pevney. James Wong Howe brought a new, raw look to his cinematography of a boxing…
Howard Hawks’ ferocious, never-bettered gangster saga has the best of pre-Code thrills — sex and violence at the service of basic All-American ambition. Paul Muni’s Tony Camonte is a near-Neanderthal egoist crazy about Karen Morley but also his own sister, slinky Ann Dvorak. George Raft has his most famous role and Boris Karloff delights as…
How soon will it be before Quentin Tarantino’s films are considered ‘old man’s movies?’ This time-twisted hit man tale made a big dent in film culture back when The Lion King and Forrest Gump were the biggest hits of the year. John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson’s hit men, Uma Thurman’s coked-up party girl, Bruce…
Competing for gift box attention this holiday is this impressive 4K Ultra HD anniversary release of Christopher Nolan’s intelligent answer to 2001, a cosmic journey literally to the other end of the universe. Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway star in a warm ‘n’ human contemplation of human limits ‘beyond the infinite.’ Nolan gives it his…
This Winona Ryder version of Alcott’s venerated page-turner is the most satisfying to date, as adapted by Robin Swicord, directed by Gillian Armstrong and embodied by an ideal cast: Gabriel Byrne, Trini Alvarado, Christian Bale, Claire Danes, Susan Sarandon, Eric Stoltz, plus Kirsten Dunst and Samantha Mathis sharing a character between them. The show looks…
Never give up, never surrender! A comic spoof of Star Trek and Trekkie worship does not sound promising, but this bright and funny space adventure is enlivened by an able cast — Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell and Daryl Mitchell. Especially good are the goofy aliens that need help in…
Three Buñuel masterpieces arrive in remastered Blu-ray presentations, accompanied by excellent new extras. The Exterminating Angel clobbers élitist complacency. The irreverent Simon of the Desert skewers the notion of blessed martyrdom. Viridiana is the shocker that gave Franco’s Spain a slap in the face — and it’s here in a much improved video transfer. Among…
It’s a seriocomic fable from the Great Depression: Ryan O’Neal’s Moses Pray runs a predatory racket hawking expensive Bibles, and the only one to see through the con is the orphan Addie Loggins, played by O’Neal’s own daughter. What could have been a big casting mistake is a sensation — Tatum O’Neal carries the movie…
The Dead Walk — and accuse! One of the best non-classic horror films of the ’30s is a polished production: Michael Curtiz and cameraman Hal Mohr give star Boris Karloff a spooky spotlight for a macabre tale of justice from beyond the grave. Karloff is brilliant as an executed convict resurrected by science, who becomes…
Barbra Streisand’s movie debut takes a slot in the Criterion Collection, and jumps to 4K Ultra HD. Opened up from Broadway and slimmed down to focus on its incandescent star, it persists as a superior musical, alternately funny and touching. Streisand showed can’t-lose intuition when it came to the big decisions: knowing that her emotional…
Deborah Kerr shines as an emotionally troubled war widow who volunteers to do Red Cross work in the Pacific Theater of WW2. William Holden is the he-bull Marine colonel who claims her almost as a right of rank. Not a combat film, it’s nevertheless a polished production with a gallery of fine acting support —…
Behold a ‘world cinema classic’ that needs no defending, no way, no how … a review isn’t really necessary, just see it! This new 4K remaster is a real beauty, doing additional cleanup and brighten-up work. Otherwise it’s still the same fantastic epic, with marvelous characters, a gripping storyline and spectacular battles. Toshiro Mifune’s flea-bitten…
22 is a lucky number for noir: D.A. Humphrey Bogart defies Murder Incorporated in The Enforcer. Sexpot Carol Ohmart lures Tom Tryon into a web of crime in the VistaVision The Scarlet Hour. And thieves try to slip through interstate roadblocks carrying millions in gold bullion in the fascinating Plunder Road, in Regalscope. It’s a…
🎶 Let’s all get up and dance to a song movie that was a hit before your mother was born 🎶 … or your grandmother, maybe. Does anybody under 50 know who Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye were? 1954’s biggest hit may not be today’s current fashion, but it’s got fine music and some great choreography: Rosemary…
We think these two silent comedies are fantastic examples of Buster Keaton’s directorial genius. Seven Chances exaggerates the dilemma of a fellow who must marry on a deadline to inherit a fortune. An onslaught of women in wedding dresses becomes a (comic) nightmare horde. Sherlock Jr. can almost be described as experimental. The story involves…
The original Japanese super-dragon is back, for the first time in the USA in an improved Toho remaster that restores the awesome majesty of Ishiro Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya’s overachieving Kaiju fantasy. The 500-foot leviathan’s debut feature will be a surprise for folk expecting him to scrap with Mothra or dance a jig on the…
This fourth remake for Jack Finney’s mind-bending Sci-fi horror tale didn’t click at the box office, but our Pandemic experience has made it more relevant. Nicole Kidman and a good cast can’t be faulted, but if a powerful thriller with something big to say was intended, it didn’t come off. As a tense chase picture,…
This ’50s cult monster double bill was produced by the Corman brothers Roger and Gene. The first re-plays ideas from several Sci-fi classics on a shoestring budget, and squeaks by with a novel wrinkle of its own. Using some of the same crew and actors, the second item is even cheaper. It hasn’t a single…
Dr. Rossiter will give you something to scream about! Sidney Hayers’ Big Top terror flick is luridly oversexed, excessively gruesome — and great fun. Mad plastic surgeon Anton Diffring creates his own harem of facially-restored women who also happen to be criminals. Circus acts provide the ‘accidents’ to remove any that become a liability. It’s…
Taken from a story by Patricia Highsmith, director Claude Autant-Lara’s murder thriller can boast an attractive cast: Maurice Ronet, Gert Fröbe, Robert Hossein, Marina Vlady and Yvonne Furneaux. The slick production, good music and committed performances can’t be faulted, but the point gets lost amid a lot of yelling. Just the same, Hossein and Fröbe…
David Hinton’s documentary celebration of the ‘Archers’ team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is a feature-length rumination filtered through Martin Scorsese’s narration, emphasizing his first awakening to the Power of Film. The collaboration was so rich and the films so impressive that it takes over two hours just for a cursory pass through the…
George Stevens’ back-from-the-war masterpiece honors family vaues and stability with the near-reverent story of a Norwegian immigrant family subsisting in San Francisco of 1910. The filmmaking is fastidious and the performances exemplary — Irene Dunne is the Hanson matriarch, young Barbara Bel Geddes the teenager who wants to write, and Oscar Homolka the overbearing Uncle…
Roman Polanski’s twisted ‘apartment horror’ creepshow melds supernatural and psychological possession — a meek clerk finds himself being possessed by the previous occupant of his apartment: a woman who committed suicide. It might be all in his mind, but the spook-show trimmings are compelling too: the new tenant plays his cross-dressing new role to the…
This collector’s box of Columbia odds ‘n’ ends has a couple of movies that are only marginal horror, but all have at least one or two horror elements. A gangster picture with Boris Karloff dips into mad doctor territory, and the mad scientist in an aviation thriller has cooked up an anti-aircraft death ray. Peter…
Director G.W. Pabst imported the notorious Hollywood showgirl Louise Brooks to Germany, to star in one of the greatest of Weimar-Era films. Brooks’ Lulu is the equivalent of catching lightning in a bottle, a revelatory performance in a play adaptation that upends Victorian conventions: female sexuality is for once not demonized for ‘loosing evils on…