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Young Mr. Lincoln
Viewers looking (desperately) for American leaders to admire can't do better than to reflect on John Ford's folksy, at least partly authentic…
Articles by Glenn Erickson
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Legend of the Lost
America’s top box office star John Wayne sneaks away to a remote corner of the Sahara Desert with the top Italian sex…
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The Hospital
A story of murders in the ER becomes, courtesy of writer Paddy Chayefsky, either a preview of social breakdown or an impassioned…
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Matinee
A scary monster movie comes to Key West just as a nuclear crisis breaks out! Joe Dante's incomparable paean to monster kid…
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Cadillac Man
The irrepressible Robin Williams is Joey, a trash-talking Cadillac salesman with three women on the line, who becomes an involuntary hero when…
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The Apartment
Savant's vote for the best romantic comedy ever goes to a sordid fable about problems in the big city Rat Race: keeping…
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Forever Amber
Meet the lusty Amber St. Clare, a 17th century social climber determined to sleep her way to respectability. Gorgeous Linda Darnell gets…
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The Whales of August
This look at the 'adjustments' of old age and the pain of nostalgia is a prime opportunity to admire a pair of…
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The Garden of Allah
One of the first full Technicolor features is a romantic fantasy about an innocent beauty's encounter with an equally innocent fugitive monk…
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Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Still looking sharp 26 years since its premiere, James Cameron's picture completely masters the mass audience thriller while pushing the effects envelope…
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Ruby
A significant horror hit from '77, Ruby surprised all that made it including its director Curtis Harrington, who struggled with an interfering…
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Dunkirk
A huge summer hit and a righteous blow struck for positive, non-comic book entertainment, Christopher Nolan's account of a WW2 crisis is…
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Pulp
A spoof? A black comedy? Michael Hodges and Michael Caine's hardboiled 'foreign intrigue' comedy lays on the movie references and clever dialogue,…
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CineSavant picks The Most Impressive Restorations of 2017
CineSavant 2017 Favored Disc Roundup Savant picks The Most Impressive Restorations of 2017 This is a tough year for best-of Home Video…
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Four Faces West
Westerns are all about values: good and bad, law and lawlessness, etc. Joel McCrea and Frances Dee's 'bad man' saga isn't faith…
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Night Passage — Die Uhr ist abgelaufen
It's the great Anthony Mann-James Stewart western that Mann didn't direct: Stewart goes it alone, over-filling a good western idea with 'cute'…
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Letter from an Unknown Woman
This devastating romantic melodrama is Max Ophüls' best American picture -- perhaps because it seems so European? It's probably Joan Fontaine's finest…
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Maigret Sets a Trap & Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case
Welcome to a pair of vintage mysteries with George Simenon's popular Inspector Jules Maigret, a gumshoe who gets the tough cases. Top…
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A New Leaf – Olive Signature
Filtered through her experience as an unequalled comic performer, writer-director Elaine May scores a bulls-eye with this grossly underappreciated gem, fashioned in…
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The Complete Monterey Pop Festival
Criterion lavishes a major upgrade to its older box set celebrating the first major rock concert event, the 'California Dreamin' idyll that…
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Deathdream
Average fans of A Christmas Story likely don't know that director Bob Clark had once made creepy horror pictures with Alan Ormsby,…
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General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a precedent! Barbet Schroeder's documentary gets up close and personal with a narcissistic dictator consumed by his…
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Election
We've all met Tracy Flick -- the eager-beaver student that charms the right teachers, wins all the awards and corners the big…
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Stay Hungry
Are '70s auteur pictures liberated and loose, or flaky and undisciplined? Bob Rafelson's Alabama escapade places Jeff Bridges amid a wide range…
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Operation Petticoat
Tony Curtis grew up idolizing the suave and funny Cary Grant, emulated his romantic moves as an actor and then performed a…
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Hangover Square
No, it's not a the-day-after sequel to The Lost Weekend, but a class-act mystery-horror from 20th-Fox, at a time when the studio…