Clint Eastwood’s mint juleps ‘n’ murder epic is an easygoing pleasure. Kevin Spacey, John Cusack and a host of great performances guarantee interest, but maybe I have to go to the book to really understand what’s going on. A solid ‘A’ for this one, Clint. The Savannah tourism board must bless you in their nightly…
Do you like my choice of leading image? ‘We’re the Glory Guys! EEE-Yow!’ What is surely the most generic cavalry western of all time is actually from a screenplay by Sam Peckinpah. Twilight Time’s extras have a lot to say about that, and so does Savant. The Glory Guys Blu-ray Twilight Time 1965 / Color / 2:35…
Richard Brooks’ exciting Humphrey Bogart picture is one of the best newspaper sagas ever. An editor deals with a gangster threat and a domestic crisis even as greedy heirs are selling his paper out from under him. Commentator Eddie Muller drives home the film’s essential civics lesson about what we’ve lost — a functioning free…
This kitty needs no introduction: Simone Simon is the purring-sweet immigrant with a dark atavistic secret. It’s Val Lewton’s debut smash hit. The real hero is director Jacques Tourneur, who conveys a feeling of real life being lived that won over audiences of 1942 and drew them into his web of fantasy. Cat People Blu-ray…
The conflicted Paul Schrader works out some hellacious personal issues, in a feverish tale of a Michigan Calvinist searching for his daughter in the porn jungle of L.A.. A disturbingly dark modern-day cross between The Searchers and Masque of the Red Death, it was meant to be even darker. Hardcore Blu-ray Twilight Time 1979 /…
Samuel Fuller’s first picture under his Fox contract is a fine Korean War ‘suicide squad’ tale, filmed on a sound stage but looking quite authentic. Richard Basehart leads a fine cast. Lots of cigars get chomped and Gene Evans is actually named Sgt. Rock. Plus an excellent commentary from Trailers from Hell’s new guru Michael…
It’s ring-a-ding time, with producer-star Frank Sinatra and his cooperative director Gordon Douglas doing a variation on the hipster detective saga. The two Tony Rome pictures are lively and fun and chock-ful of borderline offensive content, like smash-zooms into women’s rear ends. Tony Rome & Lady in Cement Blu-ray Twilight Time 1967, 1968 / Color…
At the bitter end of a ten-year slide into ever-cheaper productions, The Cannon Group sends stars David Bradley (a nice guy), Steve James (everyone’s favorite) and Marjoe Gortner (a stiff) to South Africa for an anemic entry in this series. Cannon is considered a ‘fun’ subject this year because of those funny documentaries that came out. Savant…
Fans that lament Orson Welles’ many career frustrations will flip over this Spanish-filmed masterpiece. Not well distributed when new and MIA for decades, its serious audio problems have now mostly been cleared up. It’s great — right up there with Kane and Touch of Evil, and it features what is probably Welles’ best screen acting….
What’s the right thing to say about a closeted movie career in an industry that feeds on gossip? There’s plenty to say, if you’re Tab Hunter. The ’50s heartthrob breaks his silence with a remarkably candid and positive account of his astonishing, unique Hollywood experience. Tab Hunter Confidential Blu-ray FilmRise 2015 / Color / 1:78…
Surround three international stars with several thousand extras in Franco’s Spain and you’ve got yourself an instant historical adventure epic. Unfunny Cary Grant has a BIG GUN, Spanish peasant guerilla (!) Frank Sinatra looks totally lost, and Sophia Loren conquers Hollywood by making with the sultry eyes and body moves. The Pride and the Passion…
Leave it to director William Wellman to direct the most compelling social justice movie of the 1940s. Taken from a bestselling novel, it’s a wrenching examination of the workings of a natural American phenomenon, the Lynch Mob. The Ox-Bow Incident Blu-ray KL Studio Classics 1942 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 75 min. /…
Shelley Winters, Christopher Jones and Diane Varsi star in American-International’s most successful ‘youth rebellion’ epic — a political sci-fi satire about a rock star whose opportunistic political movement overthrows the government and puts everyone over 35 into concentration camps… to be force-fed LSD. Wild in the Streets Blu-ray Olive Films 1968 / Color / 1:85…
Orson Welles’ French TV show with Jeanne Moreau is a near-masterpiece, directed with assurance and style. It’s the filmmaker’s first color feature, and his last completed fictional feature. The Immortal Story Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 831 1968 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 58 min. / Histoire immortelle / available through The Criterion Collection /…
It’s strange, it’s different, and I can see why it wasn’t a theatrical hit… but Matteo Garrone’s superb telling of three very adult, very extreme 17th century folk tales is a special item, beautifully directed and visually splendid. Tale of Tales Blu-ray Shout! Factory 2016 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 133 min. / Street…
Troubling fact: the great director Otto Preminger’s worst film is not Skidoo. Three physical misfits form an alternative family as a defense against the world. It’s a good idea for a movie, but the writer and director do just about everything wrong that a writer and director can do. Tell Me That You Love Me,…
MGM’s show is a surprising powerhouse musical bio about the personality clash between an ambitious singer and the powerful enabler who wants her in his bed. Doris Day and James Cagney are at their best in an only slightly compromised telling of the real-life showbiz relationship of ‘twenties star Ruth Etting and the domineering mobster…
Elfin Rita Tushingham makes a smash film debut as Shelagh Delaney’s dispirited working class teen, on her own in Manchester and unprepared for the harsh truths of life. It’s one of the best of the British New Wave. A Taste of Honey Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 829 1961 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 100…
The character setup in this classy noir potboiler couldn’t be better, with Ida Lupino a sensation as the mountain lodge chanteuse who knows her way around men. For its first two acts the show is all but perfect. Road House Blu-ray KL Studio Classics 1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. /…
‘Worst Movie Ever?’ No way. But neither is Wayne Berwick and comic Jackie Vernon’s tacky cannibalism tale a piece of art. When I say it’s interesting, it’s more as a study item than entertainment. Bad movie — but a terrific restoration! Microwave Massacre Blu-ray + DVD Arrow Video 1983 / Color / 1:85 widescreen…
When Fritz Lang began in film he was a better writer than director. This lavish two-part thriller sees him concocting a multi-genre mashup, shoehorning cowboy action thrills and an exotic lost Incan civilization into dagger-and-poison serial skullduggery. The Spiders Blu-ray Kino Classics 1919 / B&W / 1:33 flat / 173 min. / Street Date…
Hollywood’s most elegantly natural, defiantly independent actress comes alive in a film biography about her personal life, using inside family testimony, rare film and her diaries. Sweden’s Ingrid seems more radiant than ever. Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 82228 2015 / B&W-Color / 1:78 widescreen / 114 min. / Jag…
Hissable villain Bela Lugosi is in denial — no, actually star Edmund Lowe is in the Nile, deep-sixed in a sunken sarcophagus. Lugosi’s up top trying to get his art deco death ray in running order — opposed only by some nubile babes and a Great White Hypnotist from the Swami school of mind control….
Radical changes were required to adapt Lillian Hellman’s Broadway play for post-Code Hollywood, to eradicate a theme that in 1934 was entirely taboo. But were audiences really unaware of the subject matter switch? William Wyler excels with this bowdlerized, yet curiously near-perfect, story about the power of scandal. These Three DVD-R The Warner Archive…
Japanese art filmmaking writ large by director Hiroshi Teshigahara: a strange allegorical fantasy about a man imprisoned in a sand pit, and compelled to make a primitive living with the woman who lives there. Perhaps it’s about marriage… Woman in the Dunes Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 394 1964 / B&W / 1:33 full frame /…
Death doesn’t take a holiday in this, the granddaddy of movies about the woeful duties of the Grim Reaper. Fritz Lang’s heavy-duty Expressionist fable is as German as they get — a morbid folk tale with an emotionally powerful finish. Destiny Blu-ray Kino Classics 1921 / B&W / 1:33 flat / 98 min. / Street…