It’s all about James Cagney — his every expression commands our attention. Writer Mark Hellinger recaps a decade of gangster tropes in a Cliff’s Notes tour through the underworld racketeering of the Prohibition years. The message is that Crime Does Not Pay, yet audiences love Cagney’s reluctant mobster, carefully adjusted to sidestep Production Code no-nos….
Now it can be told — even if it’s total fiction! James Cagney takes his rough & tumble ways to Tokyo to scoop the existence of a world domination conspiracy 11 years before Pearl Harbor! It’s The Front Page meets Yojimbo circa 1945, except that Cagney’s scenarists have Tokyo militarists behaving like Chicago mobsters. Yes,…
Aka Roter Himmel. Christian Petzold’s movie wields a big impact on a deceptively modest scale. The problems of a young man sharing a summer house form a self-contained meditation on How To Live. Thomas Schubert’s Leon is an insufferable jerk who can’t understand why he feels so alienated from others. One of his tolerant housemates…
What is worse, a demon from hell or academic politics? One destroys your soul with unimaginable horror, and the other involves the supernatural. A duel of diabolists is underway at a small English college: Janet Blair’s spell-casting faculty wife employs charms and tokens to promote her reluctant professor husband, Peter Wyngarde, but the battle becomes…
Faith-based madness! This 1952 sci-fi thriller is not a space opera, but a talky propaganda sermon. Peter Graves and Andrea King exchange radio messages with God, who lives on Mars, and a Nazi madman is eavesdropping on them. The show predicts that a Christian revolution will destroy Godless Communism, and advocates the replacement of our…
Big stars, big action and a big sky canvas give Hal Wallis’ super-western everything we love in vintage oaters. Burt Lancaster & Kirk Douglas compare testosterone levels, with Rhonda Fleming and Jo Van Fleet cheering from the sidelines. The fabled showdown gun-down is embellished with VistaVision, Technicolor, and a classic clippety-clop soundtrack by Dimitri Tiomkin,…
This near-perfect Errol Flynn movie became a timeless classic the moment it hit television. The story of boxer Jim Corbett stands as a prime example of studio-based filmmking that knows what the audience likes. It’s so good we don’t mind the thick Irish humor, and we’re forced to shed a tear for Ward Bond, too….
Neo-noir hit big in this breakthrough thriller from the Coen Bros., with a new kind of hardboiled rural naturalism. A lonely dive bar, a rotten marriage and a three-way murder & blackmail scheme criss-cross a quartet of unforgettable characterizations. The festival independent launched the star career of Frances McDormand, but also did great things for…
What’s the Czech word for eccentric? Oldrich Lipský’s comic fantasy ribs 1890s thriller conventions in a story that combines gothic romance, sci-fi marvels and serial thrills. Welcome to the weird world of Czech filmmakers, and their affection for silly characters, low comedy and operatic delirium. We aren’t surprised that it was never imported . ….
The little studio Eagle-Lion Films was at the forefront of noir violence in 1948, skating on the edge to tell the story of a particularly vicious real-life bandit. Richard Basehart excels as the trigger-happy psycho killer whose antisocial estrangement evokes an eerie noir vibe of existential amorality. The filmic approach pioneers the semi-docu style that…
Michael Cimino must have impressed Clint Eastwood — the screenplay for this tough guy crime caper was so good, Eastwood didn’t mind interrupting his progress as a director. Also great fun for Jeff Bridges fans, the show is writer-director Cimino’s least problematic picture — its only aim is non-stop action and agreeably vulgar comedy. And…
We kids ogled the ’60s pocketbook covers that promised forbidden adult content, but a full-blown sword & sorcery Conan film adaptation wouldn’t come along for twenty years. Dino De Laurentiis’ second stab at a Star Wars– style franchise hit paydirt: body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger became a bona fide star as the Cimmerian swordsman, ‘fleshing out’…
This isn’t a new disc; you might not even be able to find a copy. We’re reposting a 2015 review because its original page was taken down. Samuel Fuller’s Japan-filmed thriller is a fanciful vision of Yankee crooks functioning on the streets of Tokyo. As pulp fiction it can’t be beat — Robert Stack is…
The homicide detective in Pietro Germi’s classic thriller knows the score: “A crime investigation is like when you lift a stone and find worms underneath.” The murder of a beautiful woman coincides with an unsolved burglary, and every inquiry reveals another layer of sordid wrongdoing, criminal and moral. Germi plays the lead as an exemplar…
Jean-Louis Trintignant’s reluctant gambler and Roy Scheider’s professional hit man shoot it out in the streets of Los Angeles in Jacques Deray’s loopy crime-time travelogue from sunny 1971. Ann-Margret and Angie Dickinson join some old noir favorites and Georgia Engel — yes, that Gloria Engel — for a mob double cross that pits an amateur…
Fans of Brit war fare will like these mid-’50s look-backs at daring exploits in uniform, directed by Lewis Gilbert. Albert R.N. is a little-seen but rather good POW tale taken from real life. Anthony Steel, Jack Warner, Robert Beatty & William Sylvester try out a brilliant but risky escape plan, utilizing a ‘new’ prisoner in…
One of the most entertaining musicals ever, MGM’s ‘All Black’ Broadway extravaganza wins over audiences with its big heart, tuneful song list and wickedly funny comedy. The all-star cast bursts with unique talent: Ethel Waters, Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson, Lena Horne, for a fantastic Film Blanc morality play. Additional musical magic is provided by Duke Ellington…
Texas becomes a battleground for change: the law ‘n’ order image of the Texas Rangers, the attitudes of established immigrants, a soldier trying to instill older values and a teacher trying to inspire new ones. How do we deal with the controversial past, public and private? Director John Sayles’ vivid screenplay benefits from excellent performances…
And we thought we’d seen everything good from Christopher Lee! This rarely-seen national epic gives him a highly unusual role as Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the Father of Pakistan. The great man is sober and authoritative — and also sheds a tear. The well-made picture is a fast tour through postwar Indian history, that avoids total…
Tomorrow may only be ‘A Day Away,’ but the important thing to remember is that it is a bleak gamble. Harry Belafonte produces and stars in an angry, unsettling heist noir with little chance for a happy outcome. The heavy-duty race theme comes across well, and sparks fly between Belafonte’s desperate musician and Robert Ryan’s…
Wow, Severin’s killer 4K restoration boosts Antonio Margheriti’s bloodsucking ghost chiller nearer the apex of classic gothic Eurohorror. Barbara Steele seduces, swoons and shudders as one of several phantoms cursed to repeat their murderous crimes, and lure new victims to join them in undead Lust. The original Italian version is an uncensored knockout, and generates…
Hopefully this release is just the beginning of a new series of WAC Tarzan remasters. The original pre-Code classic has everything we want: innocent/lustful sex in the jungle, terrific work from Johnny Weissmuller & Maureen O’Sullivan, bloody savagery . . . plus race attitudes stuck in the white supremacist 19th century. The monkey acrobatics and…
A pact with Satan! A pop-eyed sea monster! The lurid artwork for this fairly obscure 1961 horror double bill looks like adult fare, with a naked she-devil riding a centaur, and a giant claw hefting a typical female victim above the briny Caribbean, 🎶 or Carribbe-an Sea! 🎶 They form an anti-blockbuster Filmgroup drive-in release, and…
The film adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s book retains the original’s richness and feeling for character, thanks to fine direction by Ted Kotcheff and spot-on supporting performances by Micheline Lanctôt, Jack Warden, Randy Quaid, Joseph Wiseman, and Denholm Elliott — and a fearless starring effort by Richard Dreyfuss. Intent on getting rich fast, the ‘pushy’ punk…
Christopher Nolan’s biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer is a welcome departure from present film trends. The story of the ‘father’ of the atom bomb prioritizes the scientist’s dilemma — the nation wants Oppie’s expertise to make a super-weapon, but won’t tolerate his opinions about the atomic future. Was there ever a 3-hour epic devoted mostly…
An eclectic stack of B&W thrillers — Island of Doomed Men, The Red Menace, The Burglar, and 13 West Street — is given [Imprint]’s deluxe packaging treatment. The organizing factor for their fifth noir box is a star associated with noir classics: Pete Lorre, Dan Duryea, Alan Ladd, Rod Steiger and . . . Commies?…