This gem of a romantic comedy is as fresh now as it was 86 years ago. Mitchell Leisen’s lightest farce is also a comic triumph for the writing team of Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore and Mary Astor make the most of delightful characters and a vivid Paris created…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, we have three films vying to keep the wolf from the door, and on the screen where he belongs. Lap up a wine pairing for each movie. An American Werewolf in…
What a surprise … an early sound western that’s solid gold genre entertainment. John Huston adapted W.R. Burnett’s violent retelling of the Wyatt Earp story without an ounce of moralizing. Walter Huston is magnificent as the lawman ‘Saint Johnson,’ a town-taming killer who can’t abide thugs and despots. The show is serious, and so is…
Filmed in the high MGM style, this polished tragic romance stars Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone and Robert Young as Germans having a rough time in the 1920s Weimar Republic, while Margaret Sullavan’s disillusioned beauty succumbs to a dreaded Movie Disease. It is also a prime example of the negative effect of Hollywood’s Production Code. MGM…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, our trio of films are not for those who are afraid of the dark. If you are, don’t be scared of our wine pairing for each. In 1972’s The Night Stalker,…
One of the more prestigious ’60s movie musicals was this extremely popular roadshow item, but late-career director Carol Reed wasn’t treated kindly by the critics. It certainly looks attractive on Sony’s new 4K remaster… the stylized art direction comes across well. Ron Moody, Shani Wallis and Oliver Reed star, with Mark Lester and Jack Wild…
Let’s go back to the days of ‘The Matrix’ when the newfangled CGI toolbox was employed to visualize virtual Sci-fi fantasy dystopias, the kind that operate by the rules of an all-powerful writer … we can almost hear the ghost of Philip K. Dick rattling its chains, just off-camera. Alex Proyas’ enclosed virtual domain may…
It’s a ‘first look’ review: we’ve managed to borrow a copy of the 4K remasters of the Sean Connery 007 blockbusters. The average reader mostly wants to know what the new remasters look like, so we’re skipping a lot of the review-essay business. We’ve seen them all on screen and in every possible video configuration,…
As anyone who loves horror films already knows, one of the beauties of the genre is its breadth of styles and subject matter. Any genre that can handily include movies as diverse as The Haunting, Evil Dead II and Martyrs is impressively flexible. An examination of or focus upon death ties all horror together, and…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, we have three films about death in the murky depths. In the event of a water landing, the wine pairings may be used as life preservers. Dead Calm is an Australian…
This is exactly how Blu-ray boutique labels like Radiance help collectors find great foreign films beyond the top acknowledged classics. This 3-disc collection gets our attention with a notable item we have heard of, Peter Lorre’s one stab at feature film direction, The Lost One. But the other two films are what carried us away:…
We’re glad we were steered toward this violent 2024 film from Kazakhstan, as it’s not one we would have chosen for ourselves. Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s dystopian bloodbath is a reality check on ‘Mad Max’ glamour: not a post-apocalyptic fantasy, just a reflection of the world beyond our national newsfeed. A traumatized woman wants to retrieve a…
Known as a major critical disaster, John Frankenheimer’s eco-horror picture is conventional monster exploitation given high production values and a screenplay laden with environmental lectures. Tossed into a credibility-challenged wilderness ordeal, Talia Shire, Robert Foxworth, Armand Assante and Richard Dysart battle a 12-foot mutant bear on an urgent ursine killing spree. The film’s fixation on…
Terrible title, excellent noir. Certain movies just seem to come out perfect. This mainline noir finds suspense and excitement in a police-lab manhunt that begins with a human skeleton picked clean and nothing else. John Sturges had an early hit, directing Ricardo Montalban in the starring role and shaping memorable parts for Jan Sterling, Elsa…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, we have three films that breathe fire. And wine pairings to keep things cool. Ridley Scott directed Legend in 1985, with a cast that features Tom Cruise, Tim Curry, and Billy…
MGM’s surprise hit has remained one of their more beloved musicals — a musical with one song! Leslie Caron is inspired casting as the lost orphan who drifts into a circus, is charmed by illusions but finds her place in life and love. Jean-Piere Aumont has his best Hollywood role and Zsa Zsa Gabor and…
This 5th [Imprint] collection is in truth a varied Sci-fi sampler, with one bona fide classic, an ultra-cheap Sam Katzman item, a marvelous Camp hoot, a worthwhile idea turned into a terrible mess, and yet another weird expression of gonzo 50’s politics. In other words, fans of filmed Sci-fi will find these remastered oddities irresistible:…
East Germany’s interplanetary Sci-fi epic is finally remastered to Blu-ray quality, with original stereophonic soundtracks. What we once knew as the re-edited First Spaceship on Venus is now 14 minutes longer and laden with ponderous anti-American sermonizing. The sleek spaceship Kosmokrator is a marvel of design, and technical tricks pioneered for Metropolis turn the blasted…
Claude Faraldo’s absurdist ode to anarchy indulges in some gleeful taboo-breaking. A working man finds relief from daily dehumanization by converting his apartment into a primitive cave and rejecting every social convention, starting with his relationship to his own sister. The film has no screenplay credit and no dialogue, just grunts, gibberish and screams of…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, we have three films directed by Otto Preminger, with a wine pairing for each. 1958’s Bonjour Tristesse translates as “Hello, sadness,” an odd title for a film set during summertime in…
MGM’s ‘noir lite’ puts Farley Granger into a murderous bind involving blackmail and his own sticky fingers: an act of petty pilferage accidentally lands him with $30,000 connected to a killing. Director Anthony Mann and some eye-popping action direction on location in New York City make the show a must-see. The surprise is that the…
Charles Burnett’s most acclaimed film comes to 4K in a special edition that adds new interviews and documentaries to Milestone Films’ excellent restoration extras. The first chronicle of the Los Angeles Black experience creates an intimate portrait of how life is lived, how feelings are suppressed and how attitudes are passed on to the next…
Brazil’s Academy Award winner is the most emotionally affecting picture of 2024, the true story of a Rio de Janeiro household during the 20-year military dictatorship (1964 – 1985). Rubens Paiva thinks moving his family to the safety of London is unnecessary, until agents of the police state are at his door. Fernanda Torres’s performance…
Gary Cooper’s best oater for Warner Bros. may be this sharp action-espionage western directed with real verve by the dependable André De Toth. Coop must play traitor to get the lowdown on horse thieves in Civil War-era Colorado; the on-location action is exciting and the cast is capable — Phyllis Thaxter, David Brian, Paul Kelly,…
Back in 2000, a potential story for an episode of The X-Files was changed into a feature script and became the film Final Destination. That movie was a hit and became a franchise, spawning four sequels until the series paused in 2011. Fourteen years later and the death-defying series is back with Final Destination Bloodlines,…