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 once again delve into the bottomless pit of movies close to the hearts of the TFH gurus, but of which you may not be aware. This time around, I fear…
Lewis John Carlino’s family-oriented Mafia tale was filmed four years before The Godfather: Kirk Douglas is a loose-cannon capo who bosses his own brother Alex Cord and won’t listen when his fellow kingpins talk about modernization. Irene Papas and Susan Strasberg are married to the mob, while veteran hoods Luther Adler and Eduardo Ciannelli provide…
Easily one of the best movies of its kind, J.A. Bayona’s minute-by-minute tale of survival poses an immediate challenge to audiences: could I survive that? The genuinely terrifying true story of one family lost in the middle of a devastating disaster is even more relevant now, with similar disasters seemingly happening daily. The near-flawless direction…
This grouping of Bogart’s Columbia output has one bona fide noir, a pair of exotic ‘romantic intrigue’ thrillers and three social issue pictures. It’s a good set, with films directed by John Cromwell, Nicholas Ray and Mark Robson, and with leading ladies Lizabeth Scott, Florence Marley, Marta Toren, Jody Lawrance and Jan Sterling. And the…
“Woman Warriors in Brutal Death Battle!” This adventure thriller has no reputation to speak of, and is mainly notable as a strange chapter in the topsy-turvy life of Curt Siodmak, who as a producer-writer-director, filmed this and another equally absurd jungle romp on location in Brazil. How Siodmak got these pictures going is a mystery…
For my money, director Tim Burton and star Michael Keaton’s second Caped Crusader collaboration Batman Returns (1992), written by recurring podcast guest Daniel Waters and TFH Guru Sam Hamm, might very well be the best theatrical Batman flick ever. The Dark Knight has appeared in 15 theatrical feature films as of this writing, if you include…
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 find some wines that pair well with screwball comedies – wines that taste good going down as well as coming out our noses when we laugh. This nation needed a…
Richard Roundtree’s two-fisted detective tale burst on the scene announcing that a craze called Blaxploitation was on the way. No matter that the movie is somewhat slow and drab — John Shaft was the identification figure denied black audiences for 60 years, a hero who takes no guff from nobody and consistently tells The Man…
Kudos to Powerhouse Indicator for releasing this dramatic propaganda piece based on an actual German churchman imprisoned for refusing to kowtow to the Nazi authorities. It’s a primer on fascist power from early in the war, one of the first features by the Boulting Brothers. PI’s extras package enlarges our interest ten-fold: the pastor’s objection…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, pour up wine pairings for three movies concerning the lives of fine artistes who had it rough. Isadora is the 1968 biopic of dancer Isadora Duncan. She gained worldwide fame as…
The term ‘filmed opera’ in no way describes this phantasmagoria. Powell & Pressburger re-envisions the Offenbach work with dance sequences refracted through a cinematic prism. It’s high art made for the movies, without the condescenscion seen in Disney’s Fantasia. The stars are Moira Shearer and Robert Helpmann. Powell perfects techniques from Black Narcissus and The…
The edgy screenplay for this flashy, rough-edged ‘lovers, drugs & guns’ saga served to jump-start Quentin Tarantino’s movie career; he’s identified it as his most autobiographical work. Tony Scott slicked up the visuals and ironed out the nonlinear narrative but it’s still a QT epic through and through. And that cast of suspects is phenomenal:…
What would it take to overpower the world’s toughest special forces soldiers? A hunter from out of this world, of course. That’s the spark that ignited Predator (1987), one of the all-time great sci-fi action adventures. Released 35 years ago today, the film’s legacy is now secure: it has spawned three direct sequels and an upcoming…
Ultra HD puts Stanley Kubrick’s second feature film in a new light — his B&W images of New York lend a ‘Weegee’ flavor to the tale of a prizefighter who comes to the rescue of a dance hall girl. Kubrick does better sticking to the urban streets he knows so well; the cast scores via…
What happens the moment gunmen go South of the border in American westerns? Implied foreign policy, that’s what! Updating an old ‘MGM Video Savant’ article from 1999, CineSavant takes a look at a fistful of big Hollywood shoot-out epics that formed less-than-optimal public impressions of international relations. You know, the Friendly Neighbor Policy, only with…
4K discs are selling like hotcakes so it’s only natural for studios to give Home Theater fanatics the biggest vintage blockbusters. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s hyper-efficient, no-loitering juggernaut is a return to the joys of serial action thrills, one ‘did you see that?’ bravura sequence after another. Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones is pitted against…
The Wicker Man Blu ray Viavision [Imprint] 1973 / 1.85 : 1 / 93 Min. Starring Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland Written by Anthony Shaffer Directed by Robin Hardy While away on assignment in Scotland, a melancholy company man experiences a life-changing, and possibly supernatural, transformation. This tale of magic and metamorphosis isn’t Bill…
The Film Noir Foundation puts across more impressive rescues in concert with the UCLA Film and Television Archive: a pair of independently-produced noirs released by Monogram in 1947, modest of budget but firmly rooted in the noir style. The Guilty is a Cornell Woolrich ‘ironic twist’ mini mystery involving troublemaking twins and a soldier suffering…
This big screen, big star crowd-pleaser is a whopping entertainment yet too disjointed to satisfy as a gangster movie. It can ignore history to make its points, but what is gained by killing off the only characters we really love? Audiences didn’t feel shortchanged: Sean Connery and Robert De Niro deliver strong characterizations and Ennio…
Vincente Minnelli took a break from musicals to feature Judy Garland in the first movie to show her dramatic acting range, a charming and thoughtful wartime tale in New York: a whirlwind romance goes from nothing to marriage in 48 hours. She’s a working woman and he’s a soldier shipping out for combat; the miracle…
Much ink has been spilled on the return of the so-called “last movie star” in one Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, leaping back onto the silver screen this past weekend in the long-awaited insta-blockbuster navy recruitment video Top Gun: Maverick. While the 59-year-old does seem to be one of the world’s last stars who can reliably…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, three movies which show in stark detail how to be a cad, courtesy of George Sanders. We have wine pairings for each, of course. Cads don’t really come much caddier than…
With recent news of streaming top dog Netflix’s challenges in the marketplace, let’s take a gander at one of its chief competitors: Disney+ continues its ascent among the upper echelon of streaming platforms. Across the first three months of 2022, the House of Mouse continues to make massive gains. The streamer, which debuted in November…
Darby O’Gill and the Little People Blu ray Disney Movie Club 1959 / 1.66 : 1 / 93 Min. Starring Albert Sharpe, Janet Munro, Sean Connery Written by Lawrence Edward Watkin Directed by Robert Stevenson A late ‘50s showcase for classic horror films, Shock Theater managed to captivate children and worry their over-protective parents. But…
Kino’s Noir boxes offer interesting noir-adjacent crime and mystery pix. This seventh return to the well of darkness brings up the organized crime ‘meller’ Chicago Confidential with Brian Keith and the more ambitious The Boss, starring John Payne and written by Dalton Trumbo. The third show The Fearmakers is a real oddity. Starring Dana Andrews…