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…
Glamorous Joan’s screen image is now fully defined, and her improved acting carries her pictures with grace and assurance. Director Clarence Brown makes a soapy story play like high drama. It’s rags to riches again, as one woman captivates the three men in her life. Sexy Sadie elopes with one man, marries another and resents…
Known to Tarzan fans and almost nobody else is this four-hour serial filmed parallel with MGM’s series, and officially produced by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs himself. The one-movie Tarzan is Herman Brix, later known as Bruce Bennett; his interpretation of the role is solid and his physical presence is excellent. Filmed in Guatemala, it’s…
It’s the best detective movie of the 1970s, now on 4K. Arthur Penn and Alan Sharp give us a ‘Southern California Sordid’ tale of a sleuth doing his best to return a missing girl, not knowing that her delinquency touches on larger crimes and vices by Hollywood fringe folk. It’s a superb performance from Gene…
A heist caper classic just got a new lease on life — after languishing in so-so encodings for 50 years, Jules Dassin and Melina Mercouri’s colorful escapist thriller dazzles once more. Peter Ustinov, Maximillian Schell, Robert Morley and Akim Tamiroff help Melina knock off the Topkapi museum in Istanbul, in a breathtaking midnight raid involving…
From the Canadian branch of exploitation filmmaking comes this quirky stab (and chop, and bite) appetizer, an early production by Ivan Reitman. Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin are the cute couple that wander into the wrong snowbound hamlet, too innocent and trusting to recognize a horror setup when they see it. The future maker of…
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s suspense ordeal is back, with additional minutes of footage and remastered in flawless 4K. Few films express such a poisonous attitude about humanity: for four desperate men, the only way to escape a South American backwater is to volunteer for a veritable suicide mission, driving truckloads of nitroglycerine up a punishing mountain road….
This is the movie with the spiky bra that doubles as a gun. Pop Art meets progressive social Sci-fi in a wicked satire about a future where wars are replaced with an organized murder game. Contestants alternate the role of hunter or victim; the goal is to score ten kills. Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress…
It’s Chlorophyll in Motion, writ large: in Godzilla’s most interestingly stylized franchise entry, the mean-tempered monster faces off with a colossal surrealist vision, a gene-spliced amalgam of a rose plant, high-vitamin Godzilla cells, and the genetic-spiritual essence of a scientist’s daughter. Director Kazuki Ômori’s frenetic thriller is all over the map, with industrial assassins, more…
The territorial imperative gets a curious workout: English planters in Malaya defend their homesteads against ‘bandits’ with undefined aims. Ken Annakin contributes deft direction to a ‘colonial conflict’ story with the postwar politics filtered out, and replaced with domestic anxiety. Will planter’s wife Claudette Colbert look for love somewhere else, or will hubby Jack Hawkins…
How can such a tiny production be so noteworthy? Roger Corman’s cleverly-assembled monster romp has simplicity and sincerity going for it, not to mention Floyd Crosby’s handsome cinematography and a winning leading lady in Anne Kimbell. It’s a producer’s picture, made on a shoestring just as the studios’ domination of the industry was on the…
Juan López Moctezuma’s bizarre Edgar Allan Poe adaptation gets new life in a new 4K transfer with a correct widescreen aspect ratio. An entire corps of Mexican artists and actors designed and staged this macabre happening, the old tale of maniacs that take over the asylum. It stars Claudio Brook and sounds good in both…
Late-cycle noir introduces us to Leon ‘Foggy’ Poole, a new kind of polite psychotic menace who kills because, ‘sigh,’ people just don’t give him a choice. Wendell Corey is a fugitive seeking revenge against cop Joseph Cotten … and determined to take ‘a wife for a wife’ justice. Rhonda Fleming and Michael Pate co-star in…
We love the handful of fantastic Soviet-bloc space pictures from the Yuri Gagarin era; this exacting disc release gives us two East German space operas from the 1970s, heavily influenced by Kubrick’s 2001 and TV’s Star Trek. Polite cosmonauts investigate a missing spaceflight in Signals: A Space Adventure, a visual effects showcase filmed in 70mm….
Universal’s second 3-D picture of the classic era has an edge on its competition: direction that takes full advantage of the depth effect in almost every shot. It’s not a bad whodunnit, either, with Edward G. Robinson in a tailor-made part and John Forsythe sweating out the hours as an innocent man framed by his…
This one is for fans of Ava Gardner — an expensive Italian production we have never seen in a decent video copy, now remastered from the original Technirama negative. Anthony Franciosa is an emotional, altruistic Francisco Goya, caught up in the court intrigues of 18th century Madrid. Neither his tempestuous romance with his rumored muse…
Michael Mann’s WW2 horror disaster is still a fascinating item, especially in 4K. We marvel at its moody ‘architectural’ atmosphere, that generates dread even when the movie just plain ain’t workin’. The interesting actors include Jürgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne, Scott Glenn and a very different-looking Ian McKellen. Elijah Drenner’s full stack of extras dig deep…
This great-looking (especially now) musical splits opinions right down the middle. It charms many who love the songs and the rustic comedy; others find it an overlong departure from the original stage musical. Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood sing, which for some invalidates the whole show. Yet after a few viewings we can see that…
She said she preferred to play ‘bad’ women because they were more interesting than virtuous characters, but it’s tempting to speculate that Joan Crawford, the ultimate Hollywood survivor, was expressing her own conflicted personality. With the help of two trusted directors, one of them her lover, Crawford ruled the roost in a pair of indictments…
Düsseldorf is ground zero for a superior Deutscher Kriminalfilm that never made it to the U.S.. Heist mastermind Götz George guides a bank hostage standoff from afar, stage-managing the details of an amorous inside job. Director Dominik Graf winds up the tension for this precise ‘puzzle-crime:’ Only ‘The Cat’ knows the full plan, and he’s…
This Golden Turkey embarrassment is far too entertaining to be dismissed as a mere Bad Movie — Howard Hughes’ ode to Mongol barbarians does have perhaps the worst-cast star role of all time, and every third dialogue line is fall-down hilarious, but it’s great fun. John Wayne, Susan Hayward and Pedro Armendariz give it their…
Donald Cammell’s collision of gangster brutality and drug-soaked decadence steps up to 4K clarity. Excellent extras properly credit the writer-director, whose name is sometimes omitted in favor of co-director Nicolas Roeg. Mick Jagger’s first dramatic role is as a recluse who interrupts his drugs ‘n’ sex lifestyle to shelter a mobster on the run; James…