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 examine three films directed by Sidney Furie, with wine pairings for each. Sidney Furie is a Canadian-born film director who helped forge a movie industry in his home country, sort…
Talk about a Back-to-School disc promotion! CineSavant digs into Severin’s MegaBox The Incredibly Strange films of Ray Dennis Steckler — 10 discs, 20 films — just enough to sample this demented offering that some have nominated for the honor of worst film ever. It’s a glorified home movie by a guy bitten by the movie-making…
Plenty of actors have played Abraham Lincoln well, but the actor still most associated with the role is Raymond Massey, who starred in Robert E. Sherwood’s Pulitzer Prizewinning play. The film version was not a hit, as Sherwood’s aim is to capture the melancholy, even the foreboding, of a man who was a natural for…
Now that’s dedication in marriage: Paul Newman’s first directed feature film is a drama showcase for his spouse Joanne Woodward, one likely to garner critical attention. A small-town teacher deals with boredom, isolation, repression, and dwindling hope; the carefully measured conflicts allow good input from actors Kate Harrington, Estelle Parsons, and James Olson as the…
Jules Dassin’s powerful picture was a hit in Europe but remained mostly obscure here, despite featuring the great Melina Mercouri and a score of Continental stars. Adapted by two blacklistees in exile it doesn’t try to hide its revolutionary aims — Nikos Kazantzakis’s uncompromised storyline places The Church as a main obstruction to social progress,…
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 pour up some wine pairings for a few films directed by William Friedkin. The Night They Raided Minsky’s, from 1968, is listed as Friedkin’s fictional description of the 1925 invention…
Director Robert Benton and Paul Newman come through with an extremely pleasing small town story. Snowy North Bath New York would seem a pit of failures big and small, until we begin to appreciate its social web of ‘support relationships’ that fill in for broken family connections. Newman’s injured laborer can’t get a fair shake,…
This lesser-known suspense thriller is an excellent adaptation of a novel by Graham Greene, and a fine showcase for actor Anthony Hopkins and the upcoming Kristin Scott Thomas, with an able assist from Derek Jacobi. A Paris lawyer is sentenced to die as a random hostage of the German occupiers, but swaps with another prisoner…
Luis Buñuel’s Mexican masterpiece embraces truly edgy content: morbid comedy, anti-social satire and a strong streak of anarchist surrealism. His ‘adventurer into the unknown’ this time is no ordinary pervert, but a privileged delinquent in pursuit of a childhood sex fantasy: killing a beautiful woman just for the thrill. Naughty Archibaldo’s rehearsals are an unending…
Take a refreshing plunge into classic French Poetic Realism — pre-noir drama with softer edges and a touch of romantic fatalism. A low-rent hotel on a barge canal is the gathering point for a cross-section of quasi- undesirables. Scandals and crimes aside, they’re a touching, human bunch, as performed to perfection by Louis Jouvet, Annabella,…
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 pour up some wine pairings for a few films directed by the late, great Robert Altman. He was a groundbreaker, a trailblazer, an innovator – and hopefully our pairings will…
Pepla! Pepla! Rah Rah Rah! These two remastered Italo muscleman pix could be the start of something big. A pair of relatively early Maciste epics became Samson vehicles in American-International’s Hollywood-ized revisions. Mark Forest & ex-Tarzan Gordon Scott overthrow tyrants in Egypt and Cathay, while hurling boulders and kissing exotic damsels like Chelo Alonso, Yôko…
It’s one of the best cop shows of the 1960s! Detective Madigan’s police .38 is stolen by a mad-dog killer, forcing him to take extra risks just as more problems personal and professional close in on him. Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Inger Stevens and Harry Guardino give sterling performances, and the assured direction of Don…
Director Kevin Reynolds’ graphic, gritty desert combat movie is about a lost tank in the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Besides being 98% an unpleasant downer, it now reminds us that we got into the exact same fix just a decade after the Russkis threw in the towel. Cruel Russki soldiers commit atrocities against vengeful…
Kino boosts the third United Artists Stanley Kubrick classic to 4K clarity, bringing out every nuance of the director’s fine B&W imagery. Kubrick’s major career achievement this time was forming a mutually positive relationship with a big star. Their show is an artful anti-militaristic shout that accuses the French officer corps of willful murder. Producer-star…
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 select a few wines to put alongside films of auteur directors, filmmakers whose visions for the scripts were so strong that we credit them almost entirely for what appears on…
The words offbeat, personal and edgy used to be a draw for movie fare — we’d check out a new relationship picture based only on an actor or two that we liked. Bobby Roth’s semi-autobiographical buddy story has a good stab at the early ’80s art + singles scene in Los Angeles, with a dash…
Who are those eternal dream girls of summer? Now in 4K . . . Sofia Coppola’s first feature is a head-swirling poetic essay about adolescent angst and tragic self-annihilation. Some families are balanced, others are dysfunctional and some are just plain toxic. Ms. Coppola sticks close to the source book, looking for visuals to express…
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 pair wines with birthday cake for a trio of movies starring Dustin Hoffman. Dustin Hoffman is now 85 years old. What birthday present do you give someone who has two…
At the intersection of big-star international dealmaking, the 70mm epic, and the humble sword ‘n’ shield actioner, this comic book viking saga stacks one absurd, borderline bad taste action scene on top of another. It’s an irresistible mash-up of earlier successes, well directed visually by Jack Cardiff. Richard Widmark at forty must play the Viking…
The most popular Brazilian film for decades, this funny & steamy erotic ghost story took the world by storm and made a star of Sonia Braga. Bruno Barreto adapted a Jorge Amado ‘Bahía’ novel, one that celebrates the positive role that plain old-fashioned carnal lust can play in this world. The bereaved widow Dona Flor…
In the latest installment of our 2022 Streaming Wars series, some interesting streaming platforms continue to encroach on the overall market dominance of Netflix, for now still the most popular service. As usual, our pals at JustWatch, the streaming fan’s go-to resource for locating every film and TV title online, compile a quarterly assessment of…
Sampo Blu ray Deaf Crocodile/Vinegar Syndrome 1959 / 2:35:1 / 91 Min. Starring Anna Orochko, Andris Ošiņš, Eve Kivi Written by Väinö Kaukonen, Viktor Vitkovich, Grigori Yagdfeld Directed by Aleksandr Ptushko Mosfilm’s Sampo, a Russian fantasy from 1959, and Paramount’s White Christmas, a Yuletide bauble released in 1954, were both state of the art…
There’s no getting around it — Mario Bava’s one space opera is now confirmed as a classic. Barry Sullivan and Norma Bengell must oppose invisible aliens that possess the corpses of their fellow space men. Bava’s ‘gothic’ Haunted Planet recipe just adds more weird colored lights and swirling fog to his supernatural Gothic formula. The…
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 pair wines with a look – and listen – to three Martin Scorsese films about music. Who uses music to better effect in movies than Martin Scorsese? Put your hands…