Directed by Peter Yates and performed with great finesse by Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay, Ronald Harwood’s adaptation of his own play is great entertainment. Touring the provinces in wartime, an eccentric Shakespearian legend is falling apart in mind and body; only the star’s dedicated, put-upon dresser can get him into a mental shape allowing…
To Die For 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Criterion 1995 Starring Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, Joaquin Phoenix, Illeana Douglas Written by Buck Henry Photographed by Eric Alan Edwards Directed by Gus Van Sant A wide-eyed kewpie doll with the disposition of Lady Macbeth, Suzanne Stone’s only friend is the lens of a television camera—when the…
This import shows what’s uniquely terrific about a Home Video disc done well — the combined audio commentaries tell us so much I didn’t know about a movie we thought we knew well. Sidestepping some of the conventions of its time, Joshua Logan’s movie is almost unique in the way it speaks truth to official…
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 dig around in the depths of our streaming platforms to find some forgotten films. We likely won’t have to dig too deep to find wine pairings for the movies….
The celebrated filmic designer Saul Bass took on a tall cinematic challenge, directing a cerebral sci-fi thriller designed to rely heavily on his graphic communication technique. He lost the faith of a studio along the way, and perhaps his own sense of ‘directorial imperative.’ What’s left of his unique, post-2001 mindblower barely holds together, even…
Now available in a domestic Blu-ray — if The Phone Company doesn’t suppress it — is one of the smartest, funniest political satires ever, and James Coburn’s finest hour as an actor & project-chooser. Writer-director Theodore J. Flicker’s movie transcends the spy-craze politics of 1967: the White House shrink knows too many Presidential secrets, making…
It’s an ‘alternate future’ time warp tale of the kind that seldom works … but this is an exception. Andrew Legge’s modest found-footage movie serves up a rich dose of sci-fi ideas. What would you do if you could listen in on radio and TV signals from the future? In 1940, two women use their…
Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema XVII 17th time is charmed! Kino’s long running noir series hits a winner: all three pictures are strict-definition noirs and two of them haven’t been easy to see on video. The set is also an Edward G. Robinson festival, charting three years when the grey-listed star was taking…
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 call on the magical properties of the grapevine for wine pairings to go with a trio of films that dabble madly in the mystical. Wine is its own kind…
William Dieterle’s film of Stephen Vincent Benét’s Faust-like folk tale is both traditional and experimental, part of a brief wave of ambitious, artistic RKO filmmaking. The agrarian horror-show pits an American statesman against what may be the screen’s best-ever Satan, a rustic tempter of farmers facing hard times. The cast is sensational: Edward Arnold, Walter…
The Abbott and Costello Show – Season 2 Blu-ray ClassicFlix 1952-54 Starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Sid Fields Written by Sid Fields Directed by Jean Yarborough Familiarity breeds contempt someone said, but in the case of Abbott and Costello, that familiarity was an essential part of their appeal. In the late fifties the boys were…
The Whip and the Body Blu-ray Kino Lorber 1963 Starring Daliah Lavi, Christopher Lee Written by Ernesto Gastaldi, Ugo Guerra, Luciano Martino Photographed by Mario Bava, Ubaldo Terzano Directed by Mario Bava The title sequence of Blood and Black Lace may be Mario Bava’s defining moment. Staged in a shadowy fashion salon, the cast is…
Leave it to MGM to begin its dark Depression-Era pre-Code drama amid the top hat, silk gown & marble hall crowd. Talulah Bankhead is the wild heiress who loses her millions and then her self-respect; handsome Robert Montgomery is the pink-slipped ad man injured while driving a truck as a scab. Notorious stage personality Bankhead…
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 raise our glasses to three films which point out that, though comedy may be difficult, death is a bitch. 2002’s Death to Smoochy was directed by Danny DeVito, who…
It’s vintage, it’s trashy, it’s Italian. Bellissima! A vampire prowls in a castle, but all emphasis goes to cheesecake coverage of the five sexy showgirls he wants to bite, one of whom is the reincarnation of his original victim. By modern terms the ‘just for adults’ horror content is tame, a little silly, maybe endearing….
Kino reissues Sergio Leone’s least loved epic, a movie he didn’t want to direct but also the one with the most ambitious theme. A murderous Irish rebel tricks a vulgar Mexican bandit into joining a revolution, and they have a rough time dealing with an occupying army that favors massacres of civilians. James Coburn’s dynamiter…
This dramatic masterpiece is perhaps the most accurate and compelling account of American racism in the 1960s, despite being made by two Jewish filmmakers from New York. Filming at the height of the Civil Rights movement, Michael Roemer and Robert M. Young stick to a personal story and refrain from viewing the black experience through…
John Wayne’s final movie is a somber, blood-soaked farewell trimmed with sentimental guest-star cameos and closing-the-book gestures. Wayne is terrific as the gunfighter-at-sunset; Lauren Bacall makes the best impression amid a gallery of old friends that includes James Stewart. Audiences didn’t know what to make of the gory final gunfight … was Wayne giving in…
As the 96th annual Academy Awards fast approach (they’ll be airing this Sunday, on ABC, at 4 p.m. PT), it certainly appears that rabid cineastes have taken to the web to catch up on their prestige Oscar fare. The latest evidence from what should be anyone’s first resource when it comes to tracking down any…
Has it finally happened? Have theatrical movies finally turned a narrative corner? That just might be the case! As a barrage of IP dreck has crashed and burned in recent years while studios have sunk huge sums of cash into the supposed “sure thing” of built-in fanbases for preexisting content, a pair of actual, original…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week is all about the laffs, as we come up with wines to pair with a trio of films that take a comedic look at other genres. No fooling. The 1999…
Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe Blu-ray Arrow Films 1964-1977 Starring José Mojica Marins Written by José Mojica Marins Photographed by Giorgio Attili, Directed by José Mojica Marins Anthony Shelton’s book on Portuguese folk art, Heaven, Hell and Somewhere In Between, portrays the people of that historically unstable country as struggling “with good and evil…
Hiding in a box marked Noir is one of Universal’s horror-adjacent ’40s mystery thrillers, in a terrific new transfer. The talky adaptation retains some of Edgar Allan Poe’s complicated detective ratiocinations, and spices things up with personalities like prickly Maria Ouspenskaya and star-to-be Maria Montez. Paul Dupin must juggle a mysterious disappearance, plus mutilation murders…
All failed revolutionaries take heart: the Taviani brothers’ downbeat yet creatively magical story of the wrong rebels in the wrong insurrection at the wrong time features a disillusioned fighter-of-the-good-fight determined to betray his comrades and abscond with their money. The three women that support and/or double-cross him are Laura Betti, Lea Massari and Mimsy Farmer….
Warren Beatty and Julie Christie help Robert Altman fashion one of his best pictures, a story of the Building of the West that meanders off in its own revisionist direction. The West, sayeth Altman, is just the evils of the East transplanted into the wilderness, a massive property grab. The free-form direction and cluttered soundtrack…