Orson Welles wrote, directed and co-starred in “Touch of Evil” in 1958, at the end of what might be considered film noir’s golden era. It was right at the end of Welles’ golden era, too. He had been packing on the pounds by this point in his career, and was also drinking too much. In…
No home theater can contain Zulu, director Cy Endfield’s panoramic adventure tale pitting a small band of British soldiers against a swarm of Zulu warriors at Rorke’s Drift in 1879. Endfield’s South African canvas is vast… and to see a mile-wide line of 4,000 threatening Zulus emerge over the horizon in Super Technirama 70 inspires the kind of…
The Curiosity rover has begun snooping about for evidence of life on Mars. I’ll be watching those pictures closely for evidence of wine on Mars. Paul Mantee’s character in Robinson Crusoe on Mars could have used a little martian vino, be it red or white.Had Daniel Defoe’s earthbound Crusoe known he would be marooned for 28 years,…
For the dog days of summer, what could be better than a movie with some canine teeth? And some claws. And a loud bark. And a nice wine for a dog day afternoon. “The Howling” is a great 1980s werewolf film – there were a few of them back in the day. This one boasts…
Legendary Special Effects Make-Up master Dick Smith created the primordial transformations for 1981’s Altered States and Altered States would be a fitting job title for the visionary craftsman who died this week at 92. Smith was responsible for the look of so many movie characters, from Brando’s grizzled mob boss in The Godfather to The Exorcist‘s demon child to Taxi Driver‘s mohawked sociopath that…
With last week’s news about a federal judge in California declaring the state’s death penalty “cruel and unusual punishment” and therefore unconstitutional along with this week’s horror story about a bungled execution in Arizona, Brian Trenchard-Smith’s recent trio of capital punishment-themed films proved particularly prescient. With that, we’d like to re-introduce Brian’s commentaries, ripped, as they say, from today’s headlines….
Andrew Sarris called it the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals but A Hard Day’s Night long ago broke free from the constraints of being “just” a great musical. Director Richard Lester’s most remarkable accomplishment was making the movie equivalent of a great Beatles song, a soaring, occasionally heartbreaking, ode to joy played out in 87 minutes. Appropriately, the…
By David S. Schow Hall: “Where’s the library?” Dutton: “No need for books — everything’s in the computer.” One of the few regrets of my adult life is that I never got to meet Michael Crichton, who died too young, November 2008. Eminently emulatable, he had conquered publishing, film and television and remains a personal…