Director Robert Montgomery’s last feature is a war movie like no other, a study in leadership and command with no combat scenes. James Cagney uses none of his standard personality mannerisms; the result is something very affecting. And that music! You’ll think the whole show is the memory of a soul in heaven. The Gallant…
This horror almost-classic has Christopher Lee and great atmosphere. Keep a sharp lookout for All Them Witches: they’re not easy to spot… especially if you’re as unobservant as Venetia Stevenson’s sexy grad student. Were she studying sharks, this girl would wrap herself in fresh meat and jump into the middle of a mess of ’em….
“This land is mine, God made this land for me.” Those are just song lyrics, while Otto Preminger’s politically daring 70mm mega-production is a lot more subtle in its presentation of the ‘Palestinian problem’ that led to the formation of the State of Israel. It’s a bit ponderous, but Dalton Trumbo’s screenplay avoids the pitfalls…
Alfred Hitchcock assembles all the right elements for this respected mystery thriller. Joan Fontaine is concerned that her new hubby Cary Grant plans to murder her. But Hitch wasn’t able to use the twist ending that attracted him to the story in the first place! Suspicion Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1941 / B&W / 1:37…
Hollywood tackles the big issues! This adapted play about an unwanted teen pregnancy is actually quite good, thanks to fine performances by Carol Lynley and Brandon De Wilde, who convince as cherubic high schoolers ‘too young to know the score.’ And hey, the teen trauma is set to an intense music score by Bernard Herrmann….
Hey, we’re having a NUCLEAR family crisis, so load up your shotgun, grab the grenades and head for the hills, stealing what you need as you go. Ray Milland’s tense tale of doomsday survival shook up a lot of folks with its endorsement of ruthless violence. Fortunately the worst never happened, allowing us to ask,…
Forget Caltiki and forget The Blob: ‘The Stuff’ doesn’t eat you, you eat it! Larry Cohen takes a page from Professor Quatermass for this satirical slap at blind consumerism and unregulated commerce, in a thriller packed with ooky glob-monsters and people hollowed out like Halloween pumpkins. It’s the smart side of ’80s sci-fi: Cohen knows…
Tired of stupid sword ‘n’ sandal costume pictures? Robert Rossen‘s all-star bio-epic of the charter founder of the Masons is a superior analysis of political ambition and the ruthless application of power. Yeah, he’s wearing a blond wig, but Richard Burton captures the force of Alexander without camping up Asia Minor. Alexander the Great Blu-ray…
What horrors will we find on the planet Yoo-rah-nuss? A cyclopean dinosaur? Nasty spider monsters? A megalomaniac cerebellum that can turn our X-rated sex fantasies into flesh and blood people? Let’s go! Sid Pink’s flashy and slightly idiotic adventure stars space cadet John Agar as an average guy willing to have sex with a phantom…
Auteur Harold ‘P.’ Warren puts the Pee back in showmanship! After seeing this frightless Texan fright show you’ll want to nominate Ed Wood for a posthumous Oscar. It’s popular beyond all comprehension. The intrepid disc producers provide great extras, but can’t quite make us understand WHY it is the Landmark Lemon of all time. “Manos”…
Fans of this show know it as the It’s a Wonderful Life of war movies, an intensely moving tale that restores feeling and tenderness to people crippled by loss and despair. The stellar pairing of top star Gregory Peck and Burmese unknown Win Min Than is unique in movies and not to be missed. The…
The story of a brave, innocent immigrant gets a glorious re-telling. Never fear, for this emotional but unsentimental tale of an Irish lass making big decisions features a breakout performance by Saoirse Ronan, an actress who melts hearts with one flash of her blue eyes… Brooklyn Blu-ray 20th Century Fox 2015 / Color / 1:85…
That scarlet woman Ingrid is back from exile, and hypocritical Hollywood is not complaining — Anatole Litvak and Arthur Laurents make an intriguing romantic-psychological mystery of a bogus Romanoff Duchess who surfaces in 1928 Paris to claim the crown fortune. Good roles for Yul Brynner and Helen Hayes as well. It’s a strange intersection of…
All hail Frank Tashlin! America’s subversive secret weapon of the 1950s made incredible adult live-action cartoon movies that satirized all the sex and vulgarity denied by the mainstream. In Technicolor! Political incorrectness meets lollypop-sweet sentimentality in a farce that transcends good taste. Susan Slept Here Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1954 / Color / 1:66 widescreen…
Looking for a visionary and poetic film with something relevant to say about the ongoing personal tech revolution? Brilliant vintage film clips, many from experimental films, show how our desire for ‘connectivity’ reached critical mass. With brilliant editing, evocative music and a stirring narration read by Tilda Swinton. And it even has a sense of…
Did Quentin Tarantino stumble this time out? His tale of western killers sharing a snowbound cabin builds almost zero suspense, and the verbal excess and violent grossness lack Tarantino’s usual clever, wickedly funny edge. And 70mm cooped up in a dim interior? It’s A Long Day’s Journey into Lincoln Logs. Totally dig Jennifer Jason Leigh…
Superb filmmaking! Edward Yang’s chronicle of the children of Chinese exiles in Taiwan follows one teen’s strange story of accidental delinquency, muted romance and pervasive violence in a closed society fed on American Rock ‘n’ Roll and Cold War militarism. Almost exactly as long as Gone With the Wind, Yang’s intimate epic is one of…
Two guys, some guns, a suitcase full of cash and the open road: what could go wrong? Val Kilmer and Michael Madsen meet their match in Joanne Whalley Kilmer, a neo-noir bad news dame if there ever was one. The murderous melodrama stretches the length of Nevada; director John Dahl adds the cops and the…
Dutch doctor Rebecca Gomberts built a reproductive clinic on a ship, sailed it to countries where abortion is outlawed — Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain… and got responses from thousands of women in need. It’s an advocacy docu about an activist experiment that’s moving around the world, promoting positive change. Vessel DVD Kino Lorber 2014 /…
It’s the classic paranoid conspiracy that won’t go away… and that seems more possible with every passing year. Laurence Harvey is a remote-controlled assassin, and Frank Sinatra seems to be under a little hypnotic influence himself… or are we just imagining it? John Frankenheimer and George Axelrod concoct a masterpiece from the novel by Richard…
Kathleen Collins’ name made a big cultural rebound with a single review in The New Yorker — of an independent movie she wrote and directed in 1982. It’s a confluence of important black theater and filmmaking talent — Collins, Bill Gunn, Duane Jones, Billie Allen and, in the background, William Greaves and the history of…
Guns! Bombs! Assassinations! Blackmail! Fritz Lang invents the escapist super-spy thriller! To seize a set of political documents the evil Haghi dispatches the seductive agents Kitty and Sonya to neutralize a Japanese security man and our own top spy No. 236. (that’s 007 x 33,714.2857!) It’s a top-rank silent winner from the maker of Metropolis….
On the centennial of the Easter Uprising and just a few days past St. Patrick’s Day, WHV present’s Neil Jordan’s biopic epic of Ireland’s most beloved patriotic hero — a militant who stood up to the English occupiers. It’s the role that should have cemented Liam Neeson’s stardom. Michael Collins Blu-ray The Warner Archive Collection…
Director Jacques Rivette just passed away back in January. There’s more interest lately in his 12-hour opus Out 1, but if you’ll settle for just 2.5 hours, this unique early New Wave feature will take you inside Rivette’s world of artists, students, and refugees from political persecution, all in conflict in a sunny Paris of…
It’s the final Hollywood film by the legendary Ziegfeld star Marilyn Miller, and it’s also a terrific talkie feature debut for W.C. Fields — with one of his dazzling juggling bits. But the real star is director William Dieterle, whose moving camera and creative edits rescue the talkie musical from dreary operetta staging. Her Majesty,…
She’s beautiful, desired and enjoys a social mobility in the improving Italian economy… but she’s also a pawn of cruel materialist values. Stefania Sandrelli personifies a liberated spirit who lives for the moment, but who can’t form the relationships we call ‘living.’ Antonio Pietrangeli and Ettore Scola slip an insightful drama into the young Sandrelli’s…