Known as a major critical disaster, John Frankenheimer’s eco-horror picture is conventional monster exploitation given high production values and a screenplay laden with environmental lectures. Tossed into a credibility-challenged wilderness ordeal, Talia Shire, Robert Foxworth, Armand Assante and Richard Dysart battle a 12-foot mutant bear on an urgent ursine killing spree. The film’s fixation on…
Terrible title, excellent noir. Certain movies just seem to come out perfect. This mainline noir finds suspense and excitement in a police-lab manhunt that begins with a human skeleton picked clean and nothing else. John Sturges had an early hit, directing Ricardo Montalban in the starring role and shaping memorable parts for Jan Sterling, Elsa…
MGM’s surprise hit has remained one of their more beloved musicals — a musical with one song! Leslie Caron is inspired casting as the lost orphan who drifts into a circus, is charmed by illusions but finds her place in life and love. Jean-Piere Aumont has his best Hollywood role and Zsa Zsa Gabor and…
This 5th [Imprint] collection is in truth a varied Sci-fi sampler, with one bona fide classic, an ultra-cheap Sam Katzman item, a marvelous Camp hoot, a worthwhile idea turned into a terrible mess, and yet another weird expression of gonzo 50’s politics. In other words, fans of filmed Sci-fi will find these remastered oddities irresistible:…
East Germany’s interplanetary Sci-fi epic is finally remastered to Blu-ray quality, with original stereophonic soundtracks. What we once knew as the re-edited First Spaceship on Venus is now 14 minutes longer and laden with ponderous anti-American sermonizing. The sleek spaceship Kosmokrator is a marvel of design, and technical tricks pioneered for Metropolis turn the blasted…
Claude Faraldo’s absurdist ode to anarchy indulges in some gleeful taboo-breaking. A working man finds relief from daily dehumanization by converting his apartment into a primitive cave and rejecting every social convention, starting with his relationship to his own sister. The film has no screenplay credit and no dialogue, just grunts, gibberish and screams of…
MGM’s ‘noir lite’ puts Farley Granger into a murderous bind involving blackmail and his own sticky fingers: an act of petty pilferage accidentally lands him with $30,000 connected to a killing. Director Anthony Mann and some eye-popping action direction on location in New York City make the show a must-see. The surprise is that the…
Charles Burnett’s most acclaimed film comes to 4K in a special edition that adds new interviews and documentaries to Milestone Films’ excellent restoration extras. The first chronicle of the Los Angeles Black experience creates an intimate portrait of how life is lived, how feelings are suppressed and how attitudes are passed on to the next…
Brazil’s Academy Award winner is the most emotionally affecting picture of 2024, the true story of a Rio de Janeiro household during the 20-year military dictatorship (1964 – 1985). Rubens Paiva thinks moving his family to the safety of London is unnecessary, until agents of the police state are at his door. Fernanda Torres’s performance…
Gary Cooper’s best oater for Warner Bros. may be this sharp action-espionage western directed with real verve by the dependable André De Toth. Coop must play traitor to get the lowdown on horse thieves in Civil War-era Colorado; the on-location action is exciting and the cast is capable — Phyllis Thaxter, David Brian, Paul Kelly,…
The COVID pandemic has given new relevance to an entire category of Science Fiction thrillers, and Robert Wise’s original tale of a ‘germ invasion’ from outer space is especially vivid. Michael Crichton’s novel tasks scientists Arthur Hill, David Wayne, James Olson and Kate Reid with cracking the secret of an alien life form — only…
Richard Lester’s superb epic succeeds in every way — with a glorious production, dazzling swordplay, witty comedy, and fidelity to the spirit of the Dumas novel. It’s a showcase for a wonderful cast, and is probably the best movie of both Oliver Reed and Raquel Welch. Criterion’s massive box includes a feature-length, 4-part making-of tale…
Jean Rollin takes a break from nude vampires à la française for a direct-from-the-crypt meditation on morbid romanticism. Inspired by a 19th century poet, he locks two impressionable young lovers in a cemetery, where an emotional response to the maze of crypts and tombstonestakes over. Françoise Pascal has a starring role as la femme seduced…
We just got finished praising a picture by the ace filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, but have little choice but to be honest with this 2006 homage to postwar intrigue movies set in divided European cities. It stars George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Tobey Maguire, and we’re sad to report that it’s a real catastrophe. Expect brief,…
Volume 25 in Kino’s long-running noir series could be called ‘The John H. Auer Collection’ — its trio of thrillers include the almost-a-classic City that Never Sleeps, the odd Hawaii-set noir Hell’s Half Acre and the newly rediscovered ‘annihilating romance’ The Flame. The trio has no lack of interesting noir personalities: Marie Windsor, Gig Young,…
Once upon a time the reigning WW2 battle action movie was this rough & tumble Republic offering, that cemented John Wayne’s glowing image as THE movie star who won the war. The production scored plenty of defense department cooperation to become an efficient recruitment tool — its leathernecks are no-nonsense killers but also complete gentlemen…
This Steve Soderbergh true-life ‘comedy’ drove us nuts: the audience I saw it with wanted to leap up and kill Matt Damon’s insultingly fraudulent corporate Veepee. The ‘nice guy jerk’ poses as a whistleblower while betraying everyone who crosses his path. Yet he squeaks by with an ‘oh I’m so innocent’ act. It’s more a…
Another fine Sci-fi overachiever bounces back in a new encoding, much improved. Andrew Marton’s daring adventure / disaster / eco-apocalypse sees scientists attempting to exploit the heat at the Earth’s core — and almost splitting the planet in two. It’s high jeopardy for Dana Andrews, Janette Scott, Kieron Moore and Alexander Knox; Eugène Lourié’s designs…
Claudia Cardinale’s first major starring role was a big success in Europe, even if our New York critics seemed primed for more ‘intellectual’ film art. She’s a sensation as Aida, a showgirl ditched by a dishonest lover … whose more gentlemanly but acutely underage brother comes to her rescue. It’s a hard lesson in survival…
What does one call a film this original? It’s a poetic documentary-investigation of Los Angeles culture circa 1958; it’s also a powerful proto-feminist essay. Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers & Joseph Strick collaborated on this rare attraction. Barbara Baxley stars as a disaffected divorceé who sees the city as layers of Hell. She and Gary Merrill…
Fred Zinnemann’s superb thriller has suspense, fine characterizations and a potent anti-fascist theme. Gregory Peck is excellent as an embittered lost-cause warrior who takes on one last mission into Franco territory to kill an old enemy, Anthony Quinn. Emeric Pressburger’s very modern story benefits from Zinnemann’s precise direction and impressive production design by Alexandre Trauner;…
What can you expect when the hero of a story is a Special Collections librarian? Audrey Niffenegger’s scrambled-time romantic fantasy shouldn’t work, but it squeaks by — fashioning a ‘life metaphor’ that doesn’t get tangled up in its own sci-fi plot complexities. The picture-perfect cast, especially Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana, sell the illusion 100%….
A wronged beauty commits suicide, and Dennis O’Keefe’s hero solicits a killing-for-hire to avenge her. Director Burt Balaban’s murder tale has a twisty surprise or two but not much else going for it. Star O’Keefe looks unhappy and Ann Sears is just a beautiful observer, which gives Anton Diffring’s sneering, slimy villain the opportunity to…
It’s a top-rank war movie, the best of its kind. The Ealing Studios, writer Eric Ambler and director Charles Frend transpose Nicholas Monserrat’s best seller to the screen with honesty and realism. Little-known now, the show was a hit in America, too. It made a star of Jack Hawkins and raised the profiles of Donald…
Having an LSD flashback? Can you really remember every controlled substance you regularly imbibed in your wild days? Freaky homicides figure in Jeff Lieberman’s horror thriller, but the uneasiness builds on everyday fears we all understand: why is my hair suddenly falling out? Am I losing my mind? Zalman King, Deborah Winters, Mark Goddard and…
John Ford and John Wayne’s best ‘old man’s movie’ is deceptive — on the outside it’s as square as can be, an easy-chair comedy vacation for all concerned. But Ford imbues the proceedings with poetic formalism, and a nostalgia for a generation in retirement. John Wayne was never so at-ease charming, Lee Marvin does some…