Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, go slumming with some movies that were more in line for Raspberries than Oscars. To take off the edge, we have wine pairings for each. Plan 9 from Outer Space was…
This big hit from the yuppie decade launched a career that won’t die: with digital de-ageing, Tom Cruise can now throw out that portrait in his attic. What other 62 year-old enters via parachute at the Olympics? Paul Brickman brought the pubescent sex fantasy to the mainstream, with the spectacle of Cruise dancing in his…
Burt Reynolds was among the first American actors to ‘do a Clint Eastwood’ and rush to Rome, but in his case the career boost didn’t happen. Sergio Corbucci turns out a Spaghetti with neither rhyme or reason, just continuous action, stuntwork and slaughter. Burt’s impressive athleticism is a kick but what really brings us back…
This excellent true story of political bribery in Tennessee has a genuine heroine at its center. Sissy Spacek plays a governor’s aide set up to grease pardons for violent offenders, who blows the whistle in her own defense. Jeff Daniels is the fixer running the scheme; attorney and future Senator Fred Thompson became a film…
Take a trip to the ’50s roots of French crime cinema, now redubbed ‘French noir.’ Obsessed with American cars and movies, Jean-Pierre Melville nevertheless brings original flavor and philosophy to his first thriller. ‘Bob the Gambler’ is a friend to all in the Paris underworld and a gent when it comes to women. But he’s…
Want to follow Spencer Tracy in search of the elusive Northwest Passage? Not in this movie! Taken from American history and treated like gospel, Kenneth Roberts’ story gives us Spencer Tracy as a colonial ‘special forces’ Major whose troop marches hundred of miles to wipe out an Indian encampment near the Canadian border … it’s…
Once again an Iranian film yields an experience found nowhere else. Houman Seyedi’s allegory of exploiters and the exploited never takes a false step, building in tension as it goes. Festival critics praised the performance of Mohsen Tanabandeh as an Everyman laborer driven to a radical extremes. The well-made picture plays with elements we expect…
Jean-Luc Godard’s pop Sci-fi masterpiece jumps to 4K … and the splendid 2023 remaster on the 4K disc finally nails Raoul Coutard’s gritty-beautiful B&W cinematography. Agent Lemmy Caution rockets through intersidereal space to fight the computer Alpha 60 in Dr. Nosferatu’s ‘Capital of Pain’ … and to help Natacha Von Braun re-learn the word ‘love.’…
We wanted to cover a Universal product from the late ’60s, and this one has stars we like — Rod Taylor, Claudia Cardinale, Harry Guardino and a lot of angles to discuss — the TV-movie production values, the Techniscope format short cut. Kino’s disc comes with a good commentary from Steve Mitchell & Steven Jay…
Almost sixty years before the publication of Dracula, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (second cousin to Leo Tolstoy) wrote a novella entitled The Family of the Vourdalak. The story concerned a specific vampire variant from Eastern European folklore which preferred to dine upon its family or its beloved in general. The most famous adaptation of this tale…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, it’s all about love, because apparently the TFH gurus just couldn’t wait for Valentine’s Day. We have a trio of films, and a wine pairing for each. In 1970, Love Story…
Jack Nicholson’s loose, wooly, not-particularly-well-organized western comedy is often quite funny, especially in the early stages. With a half-dozen capable funny men given little to do — John Belushi, for one — the movie is ultimately saved by its leading lady. The marvelous, 100% charming Mary Steenburgen helps the film earn its label ‘romantic comedy,’…
Practically disowned by Columbia when new, Orson Welles’ baroque noir thriller is now regarded as one of the studio’s top achievements, and Sony has released it as a solo 4K attraction. Starring Welles’ ex-wife Rita Hayworth and a raft of eccentric players in strikingly effective roles, the film fronts a pretzel-twisted storyline that takes multiple…
General Eisenhower reportedly praised this movie as best representing the real experience of American foot soldiers; director William Wellman’s cast gives it believability and the writers stick close to the de-glamorized plain reporting of war correspondent Ernie Pyle. The real combat footage intercuts well; the sentiment is heartbreakingly direct. Burgess Meredith is excellent and budding…
Cecil B. De Mille and David Lean get the glory for historical epics on a giant scale, but Bernardo Bertolucci’s saga of an empire overturned equals them in sweep and spectacle. The complex era on view would seem a political minefield, yet the production received full cooperation from the Red Chinese. The digital restoration presents…
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 tip our hats and raise our glasses to the late British director Jack Clayton. If you prefer, you can tip your glasses and raise your hats. Jack Clayton’s name may…
Jean-Pierre Melville’s sleekest, most stylish crime meller makes the jump to 4K — Alain Delon’s Jef Costello is the hired gun trying to sidestep a double cross, in a genre dream of rainy Parisian streets and chrome nightclub interiors. The title perhaps refers to Jef’s impossibly rigid personal code of underworld conduct. Made almost 60…
Raro Video reissues Michael Reeves & Paul Maslansky’s semi-comic horror romp, the one that engaged Barbara Steele for one very long day of very good work. Corman expats Charles Griffith and Mel Welles got involved as well. The good news is that this release augments its two new interviews with key archive extras, including a…
Macbeth Blu-ray Kino Lorber 1948 Starring Orson Welles and Jeanette Nolan Written by Orson Welles and William Shakespeare Photographed by John Russell Directed by Orson Welles In 1948 Orson Welles went to toe to toe with fellow Shakespearean Laurence Olivier and it didn’t take long for critics to declare the winner. Olivier’s new film was…
Wim Wenders makes 3-D movies like no others … this investigation of the life and work of the controversial artist Anselm Kiefer may be the most sophisticated use ever of stereoscopic cinema. The rough beauty of Kiefer’s work is reflected in Wenders’ filmmaking choices — he doesn’t just report on his subject, he merges with…
Osgood Perkins’ fourth directorial effort, Longlegs, debuted to critical acclaim and box office success, due in part to an incredibly creative and savvy marketing campaign that created a “want to see” factor that pulled people off their couches and into theaters. That’s notable in and of itself, but that would simply be a quickly forgotten…
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 wine pairings for a trio of forward-looking bummers. Future shock is the feeling of being overwhelmed by too much change in too short a time span. It’s a feeling…
Some titles get remembered as Firsts: The Great Train Robbery, The Jazz Singer, Becky Sharp, This Is Cinerama, The Robe and this little game-changer from the scrappy independent Arch Oboler. The very first feature-length 3-Dimensional drama in color ignited a super-fad that blew through Hollywood and burned out in less than two years. Forget Hungry…
This subtly surreal noir thriller from the mystery pen of Cornell Woolrich is so ‘dreamlike,’ it barely makes sense! Penniless drifter Robert Cummings enters the weird circle of shady operator Steve Cochran, and falls for the serenely seductive Michèle Morgan … with creepy Peter Lorre smirking from the sidelines. Murky doings in Florida and Havana…
Criterion comes through with the spectacular special edition hinted at by Alex Cox back in 2022… Sam Peckinpah’s final western sees the light of day in three versions, two of them remastered to a glowing 4K Ultra HD. Sam’s shooting-gallery rumination on loyalty and betrayal in a corrupt New Mexico is an unending parade of…