René Clément all but invented the resistance movie in France and returned to the topic several times. This story of an American flier and a Frenchwoman avoids political sentiment and escapist excesses, concentrating on Simone Signoret’s luminous performance as a woman facing the worst that Occupied France could dish out. It’s a multi-language production, filmed…
PlayTime 1967 – 123 Min. – 1.78:1 Criterion – 4K Blu-ray Starring Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, Rita Maiden Written by Jacques Tati Directed by Jacques Tati PlayTime is work. Work for the audience who must adjust their own understanding as to how a movie should move, and work for the man who conceived the film,…
Upscale country-club noir: James V. Kern’s well-directed psychological drama has become semi-obscure for a number of reasons but has been resurrected in decent shape, yielding a handsome show with some unusual casting. Trying once again to play against type, Robert Young is a troubled architect who may have a murderous skeleton in his closet; cheerful…
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 hit the road for some driving energy. Although we don’t recommend drinking and driving, we have a wine pairing for each film. For when you get home. For one glorious…
Not every John Boorman film landed on target, but this fantastic take on the Arthur legend is a big winner. Beginning the story a generation back with Uther Pendragon deepens our understanding of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot. Excess romantic pathos is dropped in favor of a return to the mystical roots that would underpin epics…
The stylized visuals in this RKO mini-masterpiece are more extreme than any of the German expressionist classics said to have influenced it. A cub reporter experiences a nightmare of crazy injustice, a psychological payback for his own testimony that convicted a killer on circumstantial evidence. The pale and forlorn face of Peter Lorre haunts this…
Warners’ new 4K remaster of William Wyler’s towering Road Show blockbuster is a feast for the eyes and ears; rich encoding will put the word ‘epic’ back into the home theater experience. Wyler’s tasteful direction of that costume-actor-for-all-eras Charlton Heston makes most Biblical epics look tawdry. That chariot race is an action set-piece that will…
John Milius’s all-star gangland gundown epic is great fun for fans of gun action and the America’s number one Public Enemy Number One. Stars Warren Oates and Ben Johnson hail from Sam Peckinpah’s stock company, but the roll call of supporting gun thieves is just as stellar: Harry Dean Stanton, Geoffrey Lewis, John Ryan, Richard…
Sometimes one wants a film filled with subtlety and nuance, cinema that plumbs the human condition and makes one a better person. Sometimes one simply wants a movie in which, to quote SCTV Farm Film Report sages Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok, many things get “blowed up real good.” Cold Storage is such…
Trailers From Hell Guru Allan Arkush’s The Last Reel video essay series is back with a look at two trailblazing filmmakers: Lois Weber and Ida Lupino. In her day, the largely forgotten Lois Weber was the equal of DW Griffith. She ran her own production companies in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and then in East…
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 salute another great actor who is no longer with us. In 2009’s Crazy Heart, Robert Duvall plays a bartender who helps a country singer named Bad Blake get his life…
It’s outrageously violent and eye-openingly explicit — the second Johnny Weissmuller / Maureen O’Sullivan jungle epic is wall to wall animal attacks, tribal carnage and woo-woo erotic scenes that push the limits of pre-Code tolerance. MGM spent a pile of money on tricky animal trainers and clever special effects to depict spectacular battles and gruesome…
Easily the most prescient picture of the 1970s, Paddy Chayefsky’s warning of broadcast horrors to come couldn’t be more relevant to today’s news media communication morass. Corporate values turn a venerated TV news institution into an infotainment sewer, years before the advent of brain-snatching Reality TV. The satire is hilariously spot-on with its targeting of…
Michael Crichton proved himself smarter than the Hollywood system with this neatly conceived, modestly produced moneymaker. Everyone remembers Yul Brynner’s psycho robot gunslinger, in an amusement park automated for violent thrills and robot sex. Nobody remembers that this might be the movies’ first mention of a ‘computer virus,’ although the ensuing Robot Roll Call Revolt…
UK correspondent Lee Broughton returns with coverage of a Spaghetti Western that is unique in as much as it was the legendary Steve Reeves’s only genre entry as well as being his final film. Director Camillo Bazzoni’s show is a decent enough, action-heavy swan song for the iconic actor; Reeves is ably supported by a…
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 look back fondly on three films featuring the late Bud Cort. 1971’s Harold and Maude stars Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon in a May/December relationship. He’s a young man fascinated…
One Battle After Another 2025 – 1.85:1 Warner Bros. – 4K Blu-ray Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Benicio del Toro Written by Paul Thomas Anderson Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson You’re in the passenger seat and the driver is treating this winding mountain road like their personal speedway. It’s terrifying— there’s…
These pre-Code comedies of manners were America’s talking-picture introduction to ‘the Lubitsch touch.’ They’re spirited bedroom farces, even though the innuendo and pliable sexuality all happens standing up with both feet on the floor. French song & dance man Maurice Chevalier became the international ambassador for French oo-la-la suggestiveness. Co-starring are Jeanette MacDonald, Miriam Hopkins,…
Understanding pre-Code movies gets easy after seeing MGM’s sultry romance set in an exotic, sweaty rubber plantation. The big draw is cock o’ the walk Clark Gable, who gets to flex his mustache with both Mary Astor and newly-crowned sex star Jean Harlow. Director Victor Fleming is at his best, and so is that rain…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, a trio of legendary films and a wine pairing for each. The 1962 Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, was directed by John Ford, and starred John Wayne and Jimmy…
Trailers From Hell Guru Allan Arkush’s The Last Reel video essay series returns with Side B of his extended look at Questlove.
Stunning in HD, this A+ western is a total knockout in crisp 4K. Glenn Ford and Van Heflin’s performances as a ruthless outlaw and a reluctant deputy take Elmore Leonard’s raw-boned shotgun ordeal to the top of the genre, circa 1957. Those Arizona locations look amazing, with all that dramatic break o’ dawn lighting. Plus…
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 conjure up some wine pairings for three spooky movies. Our wine pairings this week are for ghost wineries. These are winemaking outfits which were doing good business in the late…
A thinking man’s nuclear apocalypse movie — from 1948? Science fiction fans will find Otakar Vávra’s highly original response to the worldwide atomic panic to either be too intellectual … or the most intelligent anti-nuke picture ever. Made in Czechoslovakia before the communist coup, it’s free of Soviet propaganda … the message is humanist,…
It’s fundamentally a dum-dum ’90s disaster picture, an action-jeopardy roller coaster ride tailored to compete with the Roland Emmerichs and the Michael Bays … and we liked it. Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton and director Roger Donaldson put it across so well that we don’t mind the silly science or the cute dog; the special effects…