When did murder thrillers become horror pix? This one is horror only by association, and star Basil Rathbone would be a suave leading man if he wasn’t slaying wives left and right. He sets his sights on the rich, conveniently suicidal Ellen Drew, yes (sigh) that Ellen Drew. This atypical Paramount thriller has glamour to…
New remastered restorations of Val Lewton pictures? We’re there. This terrific double bill gives us two Lewton shockers that are in no way ‘lesser.’ The progressive psycho killer picture The Ghost Ship suffered a legal setback and disappeared for almost fifty years; it’s a masterpiece of taste and tone. Bedlam is a costume picture…
What a Halloween treat! Karl Freund stopped directing after this classic, which is a shame — it’s German expressionism’s most exciting foray into classic Hollywood horror of the ’30s. Peter Lorre is incredible as Dr. Gogol, making himself as creepy and repulsive as possible while retaining a giddy audience sympathy. It’s Grand Guignol all the…
John Huston plays every narrative card in the deck for the difficult task of expressing the great doctor’s insights into psychoanalysis. His actors personalize the concepts of neurosis, etc., investing us in Sigmund’s search for answers in long-ago Vienna. The fascination has multiple levels: in investigating the nature of ‘hysteria’ Dr. Sigmund Freud finds that…
An old favorite receives a quality restoration: Raoul Walsh, John Huston, W.R. Burnett and actress Ida Lupino launch Humphrey Bogart as an A-list star deemed strong enough to carry romantic leads. Bogart’s gangster Roy Earle is a classic anti-hero; audiences in 1941 surely thought the film’s play with wrongdoing and heroism was edgy material. Lupino’s…
Talk about raising the roof with song — George Nierenberg’s documentary is still considered the best on gospel music. Made in the early 1980’s, the show caught the greats of decades past, now happy to describe the history and future of their work: Thomas A. Dorsey, Mother Willie Mae Ford Smith. The testimony of singers…
It’s been said that American women of the 1950s admired Marilyn Monroe, but they wanted to be Audrey Hepburn, who projected an entirely different appeal. Hepburn had talent, grace, a dazzling smile and the strength to overcome any obstacle. Paramount now rounds up their Audrey Hepburn holdings to release this seven-picture ode to the great…
Let loose some airy English film aesthetes with a big budget, a French film studio and a theme somewhere between Marcel Proust and Jean Cocteau, and back comes this strange, slightly off-balance but extremely impressive objet d’art. Eric Portman is really good, Edana Romney not so much. English actresses Barbara Mullen and Joan Maude compensate…
Military ensemble pictures work well when the excitement is all about the job and working under pressure: Charlton Heston, Stacy Keach, Ned Beatty and even David Carradine are excellent in this credible story about a near-impossible rescue of submariners trapped 1400 feet below. It’s a solid Navy disaster scenario, unusually authentic and realistic — until…
The grimacing Count, the inspired Dr. Frankenstein, the megalomanic Dr. Griffin and the unlucky Larry Talbot make the jump to 4K courtesy of Universal. We’ve seen what 4k Ultra-HD can do for new movies, and selected older features that can benefit from the quality boost if they’re remastered well. Uni monster fans are presently scrutinizing…
“We in the killin’ Nazi bizness. An’ cousin, bizness is boomin’!” Brad Pitt scalps his enemies, Mélanie Laurent serves up a killer double bill for the Führer, Michael Fassbender is a movie critic turned secret agent, and the amazing Christophe Waltz makes all previous movie villains seem lightweight. Now on 4K Ultra HD, Quentin Tarantino’s…
Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s comeback comedy performed decently enough at the box office, but its real accomplishment is vaulting Walter Matthau into mainline stardom. Matthau embodies the most venal ambulance chaser alive: Whiplash Willie Gingrich. His sad insurance scam scramble for unearned, undeserved loot is more of an exposé of sagging American values than…
Criterion gives this classic its first exposure on Region A Blu-ray! A new 4K remaster puts the story of a guy too tiny to escape from his own cellar in its very best light — Scott Carey’s combat with the spider is still a scary delight, with a newly-fixed imperfection. Criterion’s extras lean toward fan-oriented…
Kirk Douglas and Rock Hudson can’t quite bring this all-star western fully to life, even with Robert Aldrich at the helm and a storyline that toys with (then) lurid, adult subject matter. Screen-written by Dalton Trumbo and filmed in Mexico, it perhaps packs too much edgy psychodrama into a simple cowboys & six-guns saga. Dorothy…
The best horror film of the 1990s and perhaps the only serial killer picture post- Psycho that can stand on equal terms with Hitchcock’s classic, Jonathan Demme and Ted Tally’s adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel is a standout experience in every way. Not all 4K Ultra HD encodings are worth crowing about but this…
Once upon a time a movie could really send you out of the theater with a smile on your face (Don’t make me explain what a movie theater was). James L. Brooks scores here with another fine entertainment, creating yet another character for Jack Nicholson to hit out of the park. But the generosity of…
Sex and swastikas! — that combo shows up in both trash cinema and high art. Luchino Visconti’s searing look at Nazi corruption sees an industrialist family torn apart by murderous greed and ambition worthy of the Borgias. The fiendish Countess Ingrid Thulin has raised a twisted son (Helmut Berger) to serve her deadly schemes; her…
Core pre-Code excellence! This movie delivers sexy situations while nailing small town intolerance and hypocrisy. When push comes to shove, the slighted and slandered Nancy Carroll makes daring, socially unacceptable choices that would never be allowed after the Production Code was enforced. Gorgeous Carroll is a vivacious blend of Clara Bow and Claudette Colbert. She…
Hollywood’s most macho liberals pack this action western with cheating, double crosses, rampant greed, uncouth heroes and decadent sneering villains… and that’s not counting the wall-to-wall revolutionary carnage. Toothy Burt Lancaster and philosophical Gary Cooper double-deal with cannon-fodder Juaristas and Cesar Romero’s decadent Frenchman, to steal a fortune in gold. Francois Truffaut called it ‘the…
One of the best director debuts of the 1960s is Francis Coppola’s earnest effort to deliver a marketable thriller to producer Roger Corman, a gory, sexy horror show that will get past the censor. The 21-year-old student filmmaker comes through in high style. His spirited tale of axe murders on an Irish estate brings back…
Alvin Straight is not the twisted David Lynch character audiences expected… he’s a well-adjusted old Iowan with the same kinds of regrets that most people have. Taken from a true story, Alvin can’t drive and hasn’t much money, but he undertakes an eccentric Odyssey that in different circumstances might get him committed. And there’s the…
Bucking the trends for ’80s crime films, Neil Jordan’s tale of a low-rung hood attached to a ‘complicated’ call girl becomes a love story about meaningful relationships. Sort of the ‘anti- Travis Bickle,’ Bob Hoskins’ low-class mug discovers emotions and an ability to commit that could even be called Chivalric. Michael Caine chills as an…
Sidney Lumet’s harrowing film is a true-life account of a NY narcotics detective- turned government informant; its length and intensity can be emotionally overpowering. Treat Williams is the idealistic cop who blows up his whole life and ends up betraying all the people he hoped to protect. He doesn’t seem to understand the ruthless, opportunistic…
Powerhouse Indicator moves forward to their fourth fancy box of noirs from the studio of Harry Cohn, six pictures stretching from the postwar boom to the end of the original classic noir era. This time around we have some notable directors, and a nice selection of stars — Dennis O’Keefe, George Murphy, Fred MacMurray, Kim…
Yes, sometimes a producer could earn ‘auteur’ status making B pictures. A name that’s never going to be uttered in the same breath as Val Lewton is Sam Katzman, who for the 1950s settled into a profitable tenure making Columbia program pictures. They pretty much stayed in the category of ‘obvious junk’ yet include a…
Any WW2 action adventure involving the Norwegian resistance is OK in my book, and this big-star saga about sabotage efforts to stop the Nazis’ atom research is a natural — much of what happens in the story is true. The show can boast marvelous locations and excellent action scenes but the script and characters aren’t…