CineSavant
Elevator to the Gallows
Louis Malle's French thriller is cooler than cool -- his first dramatic film is a slick suspense item with wicked twists of…
Articles by Glenn Erickson
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The Hallelujah Trail
Blown up to Road Show spectacular dimensions, a fairly modest idea for a comedy western became something of a career Waterloo for…
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The Outlaw
Louise Brooks once said that the movies were invented to enable rich men to own desirable women. The Outlaw is the stuff…
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The Incident
New Yorkers of two centuries ago surely complained loudly about rampant street crime, but in the 1960s the media really ramped up…
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The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
Of all the 'depressed relationship' dramas of the early '70s, this may be the most rewarding. It also sports one of the…
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Shoes
Some movies attempted to change social attitudes from the very beginning, and director Lois Weber made that goal her specialty, with a…
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No Orchids for Miss Blandish
Devotees of crime and film noir will get a kick out of this Brit attempt to capture the American style, that now…
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Henri-Georges Clouzot’s INFERNO
A cinematic puzzle and a filmic detective piece, Serge Bromberg's examination of a world-class filmmaker's catastrophic, never-finished production fascinates and dazzles. If…
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Night of the Living Dead
Talk about Zombies We've Known and Loved -- this famed shocker is now worshipped as the father of the modern horror film.…
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The Silence of the Lambs
Talk about staying power -- Jonathan Demme's riveting, ultimately humanistic horror thriller raked in a full house of Oscars and is still…
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Nowhere in Africa
Caroline Link's wonderful, woefully obscure Best Foreign Film winner is an entertaining story of the perils of wartime emigration. It hits hard…
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The Killing of a Sacred Deer
There's a point where unnervingly harsh and disturbingly irrational movies become more trouble than they're worth. This groaner is two hours of…
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Threads
Hey kids! Learn about the great time we'll be having if the world powers plunge us into a nuclear winter! This post-atomic…
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Harper
Ross Macdonald's Cool Cat detective -- originally Lew Archer -- comes alive in Jack Smight's smart SoCal kidnapping mystery, thanks to a…
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The Witches (Le streghe)
The strangest Italian portmanteau picture of the sixties features glorious Silvana Mangano in dozens of costume changes, directed by big names (Visconti,…
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The Border
Tony Richardson's look at corruption in the border patrol service is both sensational and insightful, and Jack Nicholson gives a committed performance…
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Kameradschaft
Georg Wilhelm Pabst's mine disaster saga is both a stirring social drama and a remarkable feat of technical engineering -- the underground…
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The Thomas Crown Affair
Hollywood glamour strikes the crime genre, with a bank robbery tale that concentrates on high living and high fashion. Superstars Steve McQueen…
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The Diabolical Dr. Z
Engaged to direct by a reputable producer, Jesús Franco takes yet another stab at conventional B&W horror. The pulp thrills get a…
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Charley Varrick (Region B)
It's the loose-censored early 1970s, and screen bandits shootin' up the American movie landscape are no longer suffering the once-mandated automatic moral…
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Blade Runner 2049
After 35 years Philip K. Dick's brainstorm returns in a film sequel worthy of the original; Denis Villeneuve does right by the…
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From Caligari to Hitler: German Cinema in the Age of the Masses
Take a trip into the depths of German silent film in a documentary that links expressionist cinema with dark political undercurrents. Director…
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The Hanging Tree
"To really live, you must almost die," sings Marty Robbins, a lesson learned by Austrian import star Maria Schell. Delmer Daves' best…
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Bend of the River (Meuterei am Schlangenfluss)
The second Anthony Mann / James Stewart western displays excellent direction and impressive Technicolor location photography high in the high mountains of…
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Raw Deal (1948)
Style can be the star in Classic Noir, making a less prestigious film more entertaining than one with bigger names. Dennis O'Keefe,…
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Not as a Stranger
What? Doctors aren't perfect? And some practicing doctors are incompetent? Stanley Kramer's All-Star medical soap opera takes two unlikely students (Robert Mitchum…