CineSavant
You Only Live Once
Fritz Lang continues his take-no-prisoners indictment of America's curious relationship with crime, this time with the thesis that an innocent man can…
Articles by Glenn Erickson
CineSavant
Terror in a Texas Town
On paper it's a western with everything -- a major star, decent supporting players, a cult director and sideways references to the…
CineSavant
Where the Boys Are
Heading for Spring Break somewhere? Long before Girls Gone Wild, kids of the Kennedy years found their own paths to the desired…
CineSavant
The Breaking Point
You can tell it's film noir -- even the cabin cruiser has Venetian blinds. Ernest Hemingway's favorite film adaptation of his work…
CineSavant
Kong: Skull Island 3-D
Kong is back, transformed into a 'MonsteVerse' colossus suitable for combat with Kaiju-sized foes. The key inspiration is video games but the…
CineSavant
The Battle of the River Plate
Powell & Pressburger's big-scale historical epic is perhaps the best film ever about an old-school naval encounter between battleships. The first half…
CineSavant
The Sea Chase
John Wayne plays a German sea captain in a film that goes out of its way to create a favorable image of…
CineSavant
Shalako
It's 007 in the saddle! Sean Connery didn't become a career cowboy but his one stint as a Louis L'Amour hero is…
CineSavant
The Quiet American (1958)
There appear to be no rules governing tricky politics in movies -- Joseph L. Mankiewicz's adaptation of Graham Greene's novel about terrorism…
CineSavant
The Valachi Papers
Charles Bronson plays a real-life Mafiosi in a period picture with a fine script, some good performances and a production so sloppy…
CineSavant
Obsessions
What a great sales hook -- a feature film with a Bernard Herrmann music score that we hadn't heard of. And one…
CineSavant
The Angry Red Planet
Hey, Ib Melchoir's Opus Mars-us is back, in a not-bad new scan and color-grading job. If the nostalgia bug has bitten you…
CineSavant
The Lost City of Z
They don't make 'em like this any more, and the original TV spots for James Gray's accurate retelling of history almost didn't…
CineSavant
Blood Alley
Now a successful producer, John Wayne tries a big budget action picture with an anti-Communist theme. It's The Alamo on a ferryboat,…
CineSavant
Ikarie XB 1
For the discerning science fiction fan, this is the best of the Eastern-bloc Cold War Sci-fi epics, a genuinely brilliant and warmly…
CineSavant
Varieté
At last, an expressionist silent classic that takes full advantage of cinematic principles. The legendary E.A. Dupont goes in for subjective-emotional effects…
CineSavant
Free Fire
Have an itch to see a movie about a gunfight, the whole gunfight and nothing but the gunfight? Search no more, for…
CineSavant
The Bridge at Remagen
What's the best true-story WW2 combat film for pure-grit, no-nonsense tanks 'n' bombs 'n' crazy mayhem action on a giant scale? This…
CineSavant
L’argent (Money)
Welcome to the final film of the aesthetically precise, rigorously austere Robert Bresson, an adaptation of a fateful tale by Leo Tolstoy…
CineSavant
The Savage Innocents
The original Quinn the Eskimo (no kidding) is another life-loving rough portrait from Anthony Quinn, in Nicholas Ray's rather successful final spin…
CineSavant
Hell and High Water
Samuel Fuller sure knows how to wind up the geopolitical tension, especially in a rip-roaring provocative atom threat adventure. This show might…
CineSavant
Hell in the Pacific
Class-act John Boorman continues to mix genre grit with European-flavored art cinema, and the result is another winner. Toshiro Mifune and Lee…
CineSavant
They Live by Night
Don't look to this noir for hardboiled cynicism – for his first feature Nicholas Ray instead gives us a dose of fatalist…
CineSavant
Running on Empty
These fugitives on the run aren't innocent young lovers. Still wanted for anti-war violence from years before, an ex-radical couple struggles to…
CineSavant
Comfort and Joy
You never heard of the Great Glasgow Ice Cream Wars? They weren't exactly Armageddon. The gentle director Bill Forsyth makes a radio…
CineSavant
Brother Can You Spare a Dime
It's 1930s America as seen in the movies, through music, and the evasions of newsreels. Franklin Delano Roosevelt preaches prosperity while James…