David Mamet’s gangster fable benefits from a casting match made in heaven — Don Ameche and Joe Mantegna. A shoeshine vendor is tapped to take a rap for a mob boss, but the hoodlum delivering him to court instead takes him on a two-day escape to Reno … against mob orders. It’s low-key comedy…
Akira Kurosawa wrote the original story for this slam-bang action picture that finally got Cannon Films on a, ‘Hey this is a great movie’ list or two. Mean, nasty, desperate men make an impossible escape attempt across a frozen landscape that might as well be on the moon. Jon Voight gets to use the…
MGM’s glamour factory hit heights of grandeur with this nostalgic disaster spectacle, which retains its power even as its pious sentimentality runs amuck. We don’t believe the characters but we believe the STARS: Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald and Spencer Tracy succeed with sheer personality. Best of all are the sensational special effects featuring the…
Blood, gore and the smell of gunpowder! Sam Peckinpah’s booze-soaked Odyssey sends Warren Oates on a grisly fool’s errand to retrieve a rotting, fly-bitten… oh, just read the title will ya? Resolutely sordid and debased, and soaked in ugly exploitation values, the tale of ‘Machete Bennie’ nevertheless scores as Peckinpah’s last successful movie —…
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 at a couple of Shaft movies and a near-Shaft film, with wine and beer pairings for all three. Shaft ’19 is the fifth film in the Shaft series,…
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 remove our beanies for another great who is no longer with us, Hal Holbrook. I saw Hal Holbrook decades ago in Texas, doing his Mark Twain show. My companion…
Frank Perry’s version of the shootout at the O.K. Corral shapes up as a fine western and an even better drama — the revisionist angle is supported by an excellent script and thoughtful, challenging characterizations. Tombstone’s frontier folk are dirty, vulgar and corrupt, but Stacy Keach and Faye Dunaway generate a rough-hewn romantic harmony….
So Evil My Love Blu ray Kino Lorber 1948 / 1.33:1 / 112 min. Starring Ray Milland, Ann Todd, Geraldine Fitzgerald Cinematography by Mutz Greenbaum Directed by Lewis Allen In 1944 Ray Milland starred in The Uninvited, the story of an orphan plagued by the vengeful spirit of her mother. The film remains a shivery…
The Arthur Freed MGM musical unit gives this 1927 musical remake the old College Try! It’s a vehicle for the wartime sweetheart June Allyson, aided by Peter Lawford, who is quite good if not real musical material. The fun original tunes are joined by a couple of new ones, including an all-time terrific song…
Peter Benchley’s follow-up to Jaws is a treasure hunt thriller starring Robert Shaw and filmed in the pearly waters off Bermuda. The exciting underwater scenes boosted the careers of Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset but the memory that stuck in the minds of millions was a particular wardrobe decision for Bisset’s siren of the…
Dark Intruder Blu ray Kino Lorber 1965 / 1.85:1 / 59 min. Starring Leslie Nielsen, Peter Mark Richman, Judi Meredith Cinematography by John F. Warren Directed by Harvey Hart Produced in 1965, Universal Pictures intended Dark Intruder for television but when NBC executives screened the film they took a pass—set in the goth-friendly year of…
Paranoia strikes deep! Alan J. Pakula made THE Watergate-era conspiracy creepshow in this sinister extrapolation of political trends. Warren Beatty’s investigative reporter thinks he has an inside track to expose and destroy what looks like a shadow assassination bureau. If the technology of 1974 could be made this efficient, our own Brave New World…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. We take a loving last look this week at the work of Christopher Plummer, who passed away recently at the age of 91. R.I.P., Captain von Trapp. In the 1979 film, Murder…
The UK disc purveyors Powerhouse Indicator are back with a second installment of Region B Film Noir goodies from the darker end of the Columbia Torch Lady’s film vault. This time around we have a couple of Femme Fatale thrillers (does she or doesn’t she?), a trio of organized crime mellers, and a hit…
Few ’30s classics have held up as well as this MGM blockbuster, a costume thriller that in spirit is quite faithful to the great Charles Dickens novel. Heroes don’t come more sophisticated or noble than Ronald Colman’s Sydney Carton, nor as vile as Basil Rathbone’s Marquis St. Evrémonde. David O. Selznick’s impeccable production hits…
¡Ai Caramba! The best movie ever made about a killer Spanish Conquistador from beyond the grave (!) is probably the most satisfying of Richard Cunha’s monster romps, despite being rudimentary in all respects. The script is dire and the monster just a generic bogeyman, but the actors are pleasant and the locations attractive. The…
Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 2 Blu ray Warner Archive 1948-55 / 1.33:1 / 143 min. Starring Blasé Basset Hounds, Antisocial Alley Cats, Swivel-hipped Sex-bombs, Hot-to-Trot Wolves Directed by Tex Avery With their bawdy gags and come-hither chorus girls, Tex Avery’s cartoons might seem better suited to the burlesque stage than a movie theater. Your…
It takes too many words to properly describe Richard Kelly’s followup to Donnie Darko, but the oversized dystopian sci-fi epic just might grab audiences looking for weird extravagance. Cult hosannas aside, Kelly’s ‘crazy’ predictions closely resemble our present domestic chaos. Brilliant ideas rub shoulders with apocalyptic clichés and the acting styles are all over…
Cary Grant and co-star/missus Betsy Drake do honor to the ‘family picture’ genre — with a filmic boost to child foster programs that offers a positive message, avoids most clichés and generates some sly fun too. What we see resembles real life, even if Cary Grant should never be shown washing dishes. Betsy Drake’s…
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 at the work of an actress we lost recently. Cloris Leachman won an Oscar and an armload of Emmy Awards. She passed last week at the age of…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week it’s all about tough guys – guys who don’t even flinch when they get the COVID vaccine shot. Tough Guys Don’t Dance is a 1987 film noir, written and…
All hail Blu-ray 3-D … a format still hanging on as one of the best features of home theater. Budd Boetticher’s trim action meller gives us Van Heflin (good) and Julie Adams (respectable) in a Mexican rebellion mini-epic with a backlot feel but rather good 3-D. The 3-D Film Archive’s experts have optimized the…
France’s Robert Bresson’s theory about a ‘pure’ cinema defies basic rules of the movie mainstream — like, ‘no acting allowed.’ But his movies remained faithful to his creed, even as they became increasingly pessimistic. This story of an unloved and abused young girl is considered one of Bresson’s masterpieces. The theme is human suffering…
From the moment we first encounter unwell online gambler “Blackjack” Jack (Peter Vack), he is a cheerful loose cannon. In this case, it is while he is in the middle of getting his nightly kicks on an internet sex chat site. He has found his way into a video conversation with buxom black leather-clad dominatrix…
The Kiss Before the Mirror Blu ray Kino Lorber 1933 / 1.33:1 / 69 min. Starring Nancy Carroll, Frank Morgan, Gloria Stuart Cinematography by Karl Freund Directed by James Whale James Whale’s The Kiss Before the Mirror opens on familiar terrain for the director of Frankenstein—a moon-lit backroad littered with crooked trees and clutching branches….