I haven’t seen much so far in 2021, and much of it has been either worthy, if flawed (Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain) or flat-out incoherent and reprehensible (The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard). But there have been five films released in 2021 so far which I have unequivocally loved. 1) As big leaps in visual…
“Es ist eine schwimmende Plattform!” Here’s something for committed Sci-fi followers, a lavish German production with big drama, big emotions, and impressive, ambitious special effects. Hans Albers makes sure his pal Paul Hartmann’s artificial mid-Atlantic airport becomes reality, only to lose his new girlfriend Sybille Schmitz to him. The Murnau Foundation’s superb restoration makes 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, a trio of films directed by the great Francis Ford Coppola. The wine pairings are easy choices this time around, since Coppola also has a winery. The director and vintner sold…
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 may rely heavily on “critter labels” for our wine pairings, as the three movies all deal with animals. Looney Tunes Back in Action is a 2003 film directed by TFH…
The Raven/The Comedy of Terrors Blu ray Kino Lorber 1963-64 Starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff Cinematography by Floyd Crosby Directed by Roger Corman, Jacques Tourneur Roger Corman helped Vincent Price create his reputation as a horror movie star and in 1962 he helped him to dismantle it—already tiring of the gothic grind, the…
A review for a movie not on video disc. CineSavant bears down hard on a now-obscure UK thriller that proves a crossroads for several key themes of modern terror: Nazis, bacteriological warfare and paranoid conspiracies. ‘007’– associated writer Jack Whittingham scripted a tale that connects old-school espionage to visionary super-crimes against humanity, the thriller genre…
On this date, 35 years ago, the world was changed forever. Howard The Duck, the first feature film to be adapted from a Marvel comic, was unleashed upon the world on August 1st, 1986, leading to decades of beloved blockbusters that would — Oh wait, just kidding. It took a few more decades, and some…
Claude Chabrol’s ‘minor’ wartime drama is one of the best movies of its kind I’ve seen. A French town under German rule lies on a river straddling occupied and Vichy territories, and becomes a hotbed of intrigues. Yes, there’s resistance activity, but we also see that most people avoid involvement — and some find ways…
Errol Flynn goes to war! One of the last major direct-combat pictures to come out of Hollywood during the war, Raoul Walsh’s finely-crafted ode to the jungle fighters in Burma lets loose a powerful, almost frightening blast of anti-Japanese rage. Errol Flynn earned his pay slugging it out through the swamps, George Tobias provides the…
This ‘dawn of sound’ classic from Josef Sternberg is an important early entry in the gangster genre, a romanticized tale of urban crime with little violence but a full measure of romantic revenge. Star George Bancroft is the title underworld kingpin, who risks everything to hold his girlfriend Fay Wray the way he holds onto…
More or less ignored for 75 years, this curious ‘B’ program picture now finds its way directly to a Warner Archive Blu-ray release. Cult actor Lawrence Tierney has an atypical ‘swell guy’ role as a Marine veteran thrust into a murder mystery and made the fall guy for nefarious foreign spies. Anne Jeffreys becomes his…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, pairings for a few movies that may have escaped your notice. The creative juices run dry for everyone now and then. Trailers From Hell is no exception. It’s not easy for…
One of Jules Verne’s most popular sci-fi fantasies got the big screen treatment from American-International, which hopped on the Verne bandwagon that raked in big $$ for Disney and others. A production challenge given a minimum of resources, the colorful show is still admired for Vincent Price’s performance as Robur the Conqueror, a mad terrorist….
The newest addition to the stable of horror and sci-fi on Ultra HD is Dario Argento’s debut feature, the game-changer that launched the full-blown giallo thriller. Argento takes a few twists from the Hitchcock playbook but otherwise shapes his whodunnit with a new, slick style of his own. Cinematography by Vittorio Storaro and design by…
Today, we present the follow-up to our examination of the fraught battle between the big-money streaming sites, which covered the first quarter of the year, from January 1st-March 30th, 2021. Let’s take a look at the market shares of the various, still-expanding streaming services in the United States for the second quarter of 2021, covering…
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 draw a bead on drinks to be paired with movies about humans used for target practice. Put that in your 2nd Amendment argument and shoot it. The Sniper is a…
It’s French! It’s hot! Jacques Deray’s most unusual film is an intimate, minimalist murder story that digs deep into the affairs of four very superficial people. Among the wealthy set are four pleasure seekers with a laissez faire take on relationships, that think they’re above basic drives — jealousy, possessiveness, resentment. The movie also makes…
Years in the making! The glory of MGM on parade! Enough studio resources to film twenty pictures were expended on this paean to showman Florenz Ziegfeld. It’s really Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s Technicolor valentine to itself, showing off the studio’s enormous stable of musical talent, along with various of its comic performers. Arthur Freed and Louis…
The Wade Williams Collection yields more ’50s sci-fi, Monogram Pictures’ ambitious space travel movie filmed in glorious green-challenged Cinecolor. Cameron Mitchell and Arthur Franz sign up for a semi-suicidal space expedition, but instead of murderous Bat-Rat-Spider-Crabs, waiting for them on Mars is the glamorous, mini-skirted Marguerite Chapman. It’s core sci-fi fun from early in the…
George Seaton’s literal feel-good comedy is the flipside of the pandemic film Contagion: a powerful virus ‘cures’ grumpiness and bad vibes, encouraging a kind of Urban Utopia. The picture has nothing more to say than ‘have a nice day,’ yet these days it’s difficult to argue with any positive sentiment. George Peppard and Mary Tyler Moore…
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 drinks with movies about – how shall we put this delicately – working girls. Y’know, hookers. The 1990 rom-com Pretty Woman has Richard Gere hooking up with Julia Roberts….
Gotta love that title! Producer Walter Mirisch’s small-scale Monogram noir was once assumed lost, but now it’s making its home video debut on Blu-ray. A luckless young entertainer finds himself neck deep in murder trouble, when an unbreakable string of circumstantial evidence points directly at him. As the date of his execution nears, the only…
Hollywood acknowledges the existence of America’s proto- C.I.A. intelligence agency with this espionage tale of Yanks working with the resistance in occupied France. It’s basic cloak ‘n’ dagger action, with intrepid Alan Ladd and the daring Geraldine Fitzgerald risking life and limb to plant plastic explosive bombs. The details are fairly interesting: Ladd outwits the…
The EuroCrypt of Christopher Lee Blu ray – Region Free Severin Films 1962-72 Starring Christopher Lee, Thorley Walters, Karin Dor Cinematography by Ernst W. Kalinke, Angelo Baistrocchi Directed by Terence Fisher, Harald Reinl While Hammer Studios depended on bosoms and blood to rejuvenate a listless horror industry, their new contract player had some high octane…
Hollywood’s last big all-star war epic in Black & White? Otto Preminger took a happy film company to Hawaii for this enormous saga about the Naval push in the Pacific Theater of WW2, with none other than John Wayne as the competent commander leading the charge. Soap-opera scenes aside, it’s a thrilling epic directed with…