When does ‘tough and brassy’ become ‘camp and kitsch’? No longer a Gorgeous Young Thing, Joan Crawford walked a narrow line when reinventing her screen image. Her best noir after Mildred Pierce is this underworld pastiche that turns the notorious Virginia Hill into Gangland USA’s most glamorous, high-toned mobster girl. The extreme histrionics never stop,…
Finally, a chance to review this deserving suspense thriller. Incredibly realistic scenes on the high seas are a highlight of Richard Lester’s docudrama-styled tale of a mad extortion plot against an ocean liner with 1200 passengers. Forget Disaster Movie clichés and dumb dramatics — it’s a fast-paced struggle to save lives by bomb specialists Richard…
When does a comedy of manners stop flattering the audience, and begin criticizing it? Jean Renoir’s acknowledged masterpiece was rejected on its premiere in 1939, when France society was too nervous to find humor in its satirical needling. It remains one of the most genuinely sophisticated movies of its kind. Everyone shares in the same…
There’s a new name for ‘Murder’: Diane Tremayne. Few noirs put the blame on Mame more firmly than Otto Preminger’s All-in-the-Family tale of cold-blooded killing. RKO’s star Robert Mitchum is excellent as a mellow guy blinded by romance, but Jean Simmons’ warm / icy performance brings it all to life. The behind-the-scenes production story surely…
This one is reviewed ‘just for the record’ — we have a soft spot for train-wreck science fiction losers. ‘What went wrong?’ ‘Did anybody even care?’ Accomplished director Pietro Francisi has the two classic Hercules movies to his credit, but this artless exercise would demolish anybody’s reputation . . . it must have been a…
Warners’ prestigious adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s Pulitzer-winning novella gives Spencer Tracy an actor’s showcase. His Cuban fisherman Santiago engages in an existential ordeal, a one-man battle with a giant marlin. Credited director John Sturges made sense out of a confused production, retaining much footage shot by uncredited Fred Zinnemann. The result is a little messy,…
Orion’s smart, sharp action thriller compresses ‘Manchurian Candidate’ and ‘Day of the Jackal’ into a 24-hour race to prevent a political assassination. Director Andrew Davis gets a chance to lead big stars through a convincing paranoid nightmare: Gene Hackman is still action-ready at 59, while Tommy Lee Jones impresses as a formidable bruiser; Joanna Cassidy…
Pop feminism proved a potent box office draw with this stylish, star-studded outlaw road trip from Ridley Scott; a big convertible has never looked better on the beautiful highways of the West. Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon are escapees from male oppression that find themselves a latter-day Bonnie & ‘Claudine.’ The resolution of their dilemma…
“All Hu-mans there is no escape!” Ro-man is now on the loose in Blu-ray 3-D, anaglyphic 3-D and plain old 2-D if so desired. A years-long effort culminates in an extras-rich disc release of one of the most entertaining ‘bad movies’ ever, a tale of intergalactic warfare and sacrificial heroism … all played in Bronson…
“Hello Old Sport!” A show once seemingly missing forever has surfaced on a Blu-ray from Australia. The elusive Alan Ladd version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary masterpiece is watered-down high art strained through a film noir filter. Ladd embodies the spirit and attitude of Jay Gatsby despite the imposition of ‘clarifying’ explanations and laughable moral…
William Wellman’s weirdly morbid thriller from the pre-Code years has been newly remastered, after the discovery of a quality print. The legendary Dorothy Mackaill’s luck goes from bad to worse as she finds herself trapped in a Caribbean hell-hole, to be victimized by lecherous outcasts and corrupt officials. The sordid story takes prostitution, perversion and…
We like to defend pre-Code movies at CineSavant, but this one is almost pure Smut — or at least what passed for smut in 1934. It concerns a sleazy Health magazine with a sleazy ‘perfect body’ contest promotion . . . and Paramount’s publicity people used a similar contest to promote the movie. Robert Armstrong…
Joseph Losey’s first feature is an anomaly — a million-dollar Technicolor semi-fantasy about tolerance, anti-conformism and pacifist activism, made just as Hollywood was commencing a purge of liberal writers and directors. Young Dean Stockwell is excellent as the serious, puzzled boy whose hair turns bright green overnight, making him socially suspect. The odd ‘Franz Kafka-lite’…
A stunning movie that conveys the pure spirit of a vintage fairy tale, Aleksandr Ptushko’s story of royal intrigue is charming to the Nth degree, with pure-hearted characters and as many ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ moments as a classic Disney picture. It’s suffused in magic, not the show-off kind, but the deep-spirit visual wonder found in…
Gangsters, murder, sex and intrigue on the French Riviera! René Clément’s overheated thriller touches all the bases, dropping Alain Delon’s fugitive playboy into a chateau henhouse with the seductive Lola Albright and Jane Fonda. It’s a twisted tale directed in high style, with Delon caught in a very Tight Spot but thinking he can outsmart…
Ethereal creatures walk among us! Wim Wenders’ contemplative utopia proposes other-dimensional Angels that comfort and watch over the insecure and fearful. Angel First Class Bruno Ganz envies living humans and falls in love with the aerial ballerina Solveig Dommartin. To experience life and love firsthand he opts to cast off his exalted status and become…
With a fine script, decent co-stars and sensitive direction, this fancy-dress production of the sad story of The Lady of the Camélias can boast Greta Garbo’s most accomplished romantic performance. The relative inexperience of young co-star Robert Taylor is actually a plus — it makes sense for Marguerite Gautier to be carried off in rapture…
It hasn’t much of a reputation, but James Frawley’s kooky Disaster Movie spoof may fill the need for silly comedy — it has a crazy premise, a truly ridiculous ‘star’ in its enormous atom-powered bus, and a jolly all-star crew of comedic performers: Joseph Bologna, Stockard Channing, John Beck, Rene Auberjonois, Ned Beatty, José Ferrer,…
Peter Bogdanovich’s intriguing suspense thriller is a near ‘perfect mousetrap’ of a movie that neatly sidesteps accusations of topical exploitation. Polly Platt and Samuel Fuller helped Bogdanovich concoct a low budget winner from Roger Corman’s restrictive requirements: utilize a couple of days of owed time from actor Boris Karloff and fold in stock footage from…
Fritz Lang’s wavering American career hit a high note in this adaptation of a Clifford Odets play with a four-star cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan and Marilyn Monroe, all billed above the title. It’s a tawdry love triangle in a fishing town, where infidelity brings violence to the surface. Monroe’s character — “Twenty,…
Viavision Imprint’s 4th Noir collection is here, with two core examples of the classic style, one solid gangster film, an adventure-intrigue tale set in South Africa and two psychological ‘woman in peril’ thrillers. The male leads Burt Lancaster, Alan Ladd, Humphrey Bogart and Robert Ryan must contend with heroines Corrine Calvet, Jan Sterling, Phyllis Calvert…
CineSavant takes a break to catch up with a ‘Wonder Movie of the Ages’ — from 93 years ago. Raoul Walsh led an enormous company all over the West to film an immense wagon train epic — in a short-lived 70mm film process called Grandeur. The vistas of pioneer action are staggering, and so is…
Another CineSavant Revival Screening Review, or in other words, it’s not yet officially available for English-language viewers. This French The Hunchback of Notre Dame may not be the cinematic masterpiece that is RKO’s 1939 version, but it has a literate script, good production values, color and CinemaScope — and doesn’t mar the Victor Hugo original…
🎶 “Have you heard . . . about the stars? . . . Ju-pi-ter could collide with Mars . . .” 🎶 A comet is on a collision course with Earth, a saga experienced through a TV Network, the teenager who first discovered the astral threat, and the team of astronauts dispatched on a deep…
CineSavant dips into film school heaven with Bruce Posner’s new collection of experimental art pix spanning a hundred years of cinematic impishness. The Dadaists and Cubists are here — Léger, Man Ray, Duchamp — plus camera geniuses, cinematic theorists and others wishing to make a splash in museum showings. Featured are works by Orson Welles,…
The first MGM film from the noir team of Anthony Mann / John Alton is a crime exposé of the migrant farmworker issue. Ricardo Montalban is excellent as a Mexican immigration cop, and co-star George Murphy makes a traumatic impression in one of the most sadistic scenes in classic film noir. Hardcore noir addresses a…