Everybody sing!: An Italian boy from Napoli, got petrified by the scenery. Now his face is white and his arms are long. And he’d rather choke you than sing a song! Hey Ed Cahn! Do another cheapie for us Hey Ed Cahn! No more Volcano nonsense! — A really stiff guy searches for the reincarnation…
What’s it all about, Alfie? The master of suspense goes in an unusual direction with this murder mystery with a Catholic background. And foreground. Actually, it’s a regular guidebook for proper priest deportment, and it’s so complex that we wonder if Hitchcock himself had a full grip on it. Montgomery Clift is extremely good atop…
What? Not another Hungarian silent film from 1914 — how many can the market bear? Actually, the rarity and high quality of this amazing rediscovery is nothing to laugh at. Michael Curtiz made fifty or sixty features before coming to America, and this sentimental melodrama shows us that basic entertainment values haven’t changed. The Undesirable…
Is this not the most brilliant screenplay from 2015? Alex Garland assembles a perfect fable about robots, artificial intelligence and the hubris of a software genius who thinks he’s a God. Garland’s direction is tops as well, as is the acting of Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson and Alicia Vikander. When did I realize I was…
When John Huston went to war he took his mission seriously… as an artist. He made four wartime docus for the army. San Pietro and the long suppressed Let There Be Light are the classics we studied in film school; Winning Your Wings is typical enlistment booster material and Report from the Aleutians a remarkably…
The Audubon Society battles plumage poachers in the Everglades, circa 1900. Legendary director Nicholas Ray suffered an on-location meltdown filming this early ecologically sensitive epic, but the finished product is still one of his better pictures. Burl Ives, Christopher Plummer and Chana Eden give top ‘Ray’ performances. The eccentric supporting cast includes Peter Falk, boxer…
This is as sexy as Hollywood pix got in 1960. John O’Hara’s novel about class snobbery and the drive for success posits Paul Newman as a moody go-getter. In glossy soap opera fashion, his silver spoon-fed bride Joanne Woodward morphs into an unfaithful monster. Some adulterous relationships are excused and others not in this glossy,…
Where was Leonard Pinth Garnell when we needed him? Joseph Losey is often accused of pretension but in this case he may be guilty. Robert Shaw and Malcolm McDowell are escapees scrambling across a rocky terrain, pursued by a helicopter that seems satisfied to just harass them. Keeping the audience in the dark doesn’t reap…
Hey, let’s dig up a rotting corpse, just for fun! A group of crazy Florida theater students plays a group of crazy Florida theater students in Bob Clark’s spirited no-budget attempt to ride in the wake of Night of the Living Dead. An hour of bad jokes is capped by a satisfying zombie onslaught that got…
Where do I get my Big Brother campaign pin and yard poster? Michael Radford’s elaborate Orwell adaptation sticks closely to the original book, even after decades of deriviative dystopias have stolen its fire. John Hurt is excellent as Winston Smith, and Richard Burton is his inquisitor. Nineteen Eighty-Four Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1984 /…
Wim Wenders goes neo-noir in this wonderfully moody character-driven crime tale. Soulful art framer Bruno Ganz is the patsy in a murder scheme, but Dennis Hopper’s sociopath / villain has a change of heart and befriends him. This modern classic looks great and features movie directors Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller in major guest roles….
Forget the proletarian messages, this Italian Neorealist classic is really an exploitation film about ogling brazen, buxom babes in short-shorts, up to their knees in a rice paddy. Hollywood actress Doris Dowling is the nominal star but new discovery Silvana Mangano became the knockout dream of every Italian male suffering from postwar shortages (cough). Giuseppe…
RKO’s morale-building wartime thriller adds an element of sexual perversion to its story of Nazi crimes against children, thus creating one of the studio’s all-time biggest hits. Bonita Granville is the victim Tim Holt her Nazi-youth heartthrob, and Otto Kruger provides the perverted sneers. Hitler’s Children DVD-R The Warner Archive Collection 1943 / B&W /…
At last, an adventure movie that does without action-epic superhero BS. It’s simply You Are There with a dozen likeable, determined climbers coping with calamity in a place that, for all the help that can be sent, ‘might as well be on the moon.’ The excellent depth effects all but nail us to the screen….
Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary feature takes his earlier The Act of Killing one step further. An Indonesian optometrist dares to interview death squad leaders that half a century before murdered a million people as part of an anti-communist genocide. The eye doctor’s own brother was one of the victims. What we see sheds light on a long-suppressed outrage,…
The bloody adventures of a swordswoman dedicated to murderous revenge provided Quentin Tarantino with a major inspiration. Director Toshiyo Fujita’s impeccable images make the gorgeous Meiko Kaji into an almost abstract superheroine in beautiful cultured dress and hairstyles — and soaked with sprayed blood. The Complete Lady Snowblood Lady Snowblood & Lady Snowblood: Love Song…
It’s the John Ford film you never heard of, not because it’s bad, but because it’s a little confused. Richard Greene, David Niven and an emotional George Sanders (!) dedicate their lives to clearing their father’s name of a smear by international arms smugglers! Their spirited companion Loretta Young behaves almost as if this were…
Robert Wise’s taut noir suspenser about the Mafia takeover of a small city is like an underworld Invasion of the Body Snatchers. John Forsythe’s newsman slowly realizes that gambling corruption has infiltrated the business district, city hall, and even his close associates; he’s expected to become a crook too, or else. Great docudrama style aided by…
Stop! Don’t touch that dial… If you like your atom-age propaganda straight up, MGM has the movie for you, an expensive 1946 docu-drama that became ‘the official story’ for the making of the bomb. The huge cast includes Brian Donlevy, Robert Walker, Tom Drake, Audrey Totter, Hume Cronyn, Hurd Hatfield, and Joseph Calleia. How trustworthy…
Fans that missed Twilight Time’s initial Blu-ray release of Ray Harryhausen’s Jules Verne spectacle get a second chance with this Encore Edition. It includes an improved transfer and new extras, including an excellent audio commentary with Steven C. Smith, C. Courtney Joyner and Randall William Cook. The show still sends us, and Bernard Herrmann’s powerful music score…
It’s a TV movie graduated to feature status, with four imagination-challenged tales of terror. The script has lots of variety — a video game possessed by the devil, a truck possessed by the devil, and lastly, a rat possessed by the devil! But the roster of actors is attractive — Cristina Raines, Emilio Estevez, Lance…
Do you love movies about cute animals? The original pet-lion-in-Africa romp is actually a well balanced nature film about the separation between wild animals and those raised by humans. Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers winningly play the Adamsons, game wardens that dedicate themselves to the well-being of Elsa, the lioness they raise from infancy. Born…
The latest restoration of a German silent classic is F.W. Murnau’s lavishly mounted version of the Goethe tale, starring Emil Jannings as Mephisto. It’s an impressive drama but also has a sense of (Teutonic) humor here and there. Most every shot is a fantastic visuals, and the bigger scenes use visual designs worthy of fine…
RKO’s final in-house production is a good end-of-an-era film, a spirited and well-made musical comedy. Bright-eyed Jane Powell can’t stop accepting marriage proposals, from nerdy Tommy Noonan, dreamboat kisser Cliff Robertson and zillionare Keith Andes. She imagines her future with each man in musical terms, through production numbers staged by Gower Champion. The Girl Most…
It’s sweet, all right, not to mention sentimental and corny — as Adeline Schmidt, Irene Dunne leaves her father’s beer garden to sing in New York, where she falls prey to a predatory playboy. Set in nostalgic 1898, this Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II musical features several unfamiliar but marvelous songs. Dunne shows the film world the…
Frank Sinatra shines in a story of police corruption that tries to say it like it is — or like it was in 1968, just before the ratings system came in. The well-intentioned, suspenseful story is burdened by odd censor choices, Sinatra’s conservative self-image, and rudely retrograde attitudes toward gays. In a sparkling new transfer…