Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, is it winter? Is it a bad case of post-holiday blues? Santa didn’t treat you right? Whatever it is that’s got you down, a few films filled with sadistic violence should…
This solid hit generated numerous sequels, a truckload of cartoons and a key character for Peter Sellers, who slipped into the movie at almost the very last second. David Niven, Robert Wagner and Capucine carry the slapstick comedy, while the newcomer Claudia Cardinale made a fantastic American debut. Everyone had the original soundtrack album. Blake…
For the sensitive, this high-toned tale of Death trapped in a tree can be an emotional sledgehammer, with enough weeping and wailing for ten sad stories. To avoid being transported to the great beyond, Lionel Barrymore uses a magic tree to neutralize Mr. Brink — Death Himself. But that means that nobody dies anywhere, leaving…
Laurel & Hardy/ The Definitive Restorations Volume 2 (1929-1935) 1929-1935 – 1.33:1 Kit Parker Films – Blu-ray Starring Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, James Finlayson Written by Leo McCarey, Stan Laurel Directed by James Parrot, Charley Rogers Laurel and Hardy were a team so beloved they could unite even this country—it’s no small irony that they…
It’s a movie musical ripe for rediscovery … a film version of a classic ballad opera from 1728, a satirical lampoon of ‘noble highwayman’ tales. Laurence Olivier is Macheath, a rogue repeatedly rescued by the women that love him; with society so corrupt, Macheath’s stylish thievery feels heroic. Some of the vintage songs and lyrics…
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 Christmas extravaganza! We fill your stockings with movies about the holidays and wine pairings to go with them. Not a lump of coal to be seen. The Bishop’s Wife has Cary…
When the ‘talkies’ arrived, Broadway’s smartest wordsmiths wasted no time mining Hollywood gold. Hecht and MacArthur’s cynical newspaper saga defined a brassy new American style; a decade later, Howard Hawks’ ‘gender spin’ on the material became an equal comedy classic. Criterion reprises their newspaper classic double bill, bumping one of the features up to 4K…
The StudioCanal restoration of one of the creepiest and most elegant fright films ever made comes to Region A on 4K Ultra HD: five classic horror tales, filmed by four of Ealing Studios’ best directors. The tale’s insane elliptical framing story captures the uncanny quality of a nightmare; Georges Auric’s music score sets the viewer…
Joe Dante visits the Severin Cellar and finds some old friends. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are on the menu, so join us, won’t you? And here’s a handy run-down of the treasures to be found, courtesy of Blu-ray.com. Joe Dante Enters the Severin Cellar
“Maybe we can make some sense.” David Byrne & Spike Lee’s joyous concert film is just as energizing as Stop Making Sense; it offers a theme of peace, inclusivity and social justice, and ponders the personal challenge of finding one’s way in the chaos of modern living. The songs are a mix of new pieces,…
Among monster boxes this one takes the prize: 104 DVD discs, holding twenty years of a series that’s been in constant TV rotation for (cough) 35 years. They’re all here — Jerry Orbach, Sam Waterston, S. Epatha Merkerson and Benjamin Bratt. I imagine this is prime gift box bait, and an opportunity for casual fans…
Here’s the fourth and penultimate installment of my list of the twenty-five greatest horror films from the past quarter century, starting from the bottom and gradually heading to the top by the end of this year. We’ve reached the Top Ten, just in time to provide some horrific holiday cheer. Here’s a link if you…
This week’s The Last Reel examines the many forms cinematic femme fatales can take, and why we still love them even though they’re so bad for us. Peggy Cummings, Melanie Griffith, Taylour Paige and Riley Keough number among Allan’s case studies today.
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 give you what Santa probably can’t. More movies about which you were completely oblivious. Santa can take care of the wine pairings, but I’ll steer his sleigh in the right…
This decent space adventure might have been a hit, if another Mars-themed movie hadn’t bombed a few months before. Cocky astronauts journey to what is supposed to be a partly terraformed Mars, only to experience mission snafus that make survival unlikely. The plot complications cherry-picked from the best of sci-fi are mostly exciting; the actors…
Advertised like an action spectacle, Irving Rapper’s religious epic is about a novice nun who spends most of the film on a wild romantic spree — men, dancing, bullfights — before a glorious finale with a show of reverence. Carroll Baker is the ‘spirited’ novitiate and Roger Moore the gallant officer she loves. This prime…
Noir goes English, with U.S. studios looking for bargains and American talent looking for acting opportunities and tax breaks. These Columbia releases show English actors on the rise as well. Ken Hughes, Mark Robson and Terence Fisher direct Arlene Dahl, Richard Widmark, Faith Domergue and Victor Mature, opposite Mai Zetterling, Elizabeth Sellars, Eunice Gayson, Herbert…
Phil Karlson’s nervous noir throws tough guy John Payne into the middle of a Pulp Fiction tangle, crashing the meet-up of four thieves who have used him as a patsy in a million dollar bank heist. The script served as a partial blueprint for Quentin Tarantino, what with criminal colleagues that don’t know each other’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 are proud to have a trio of films exploring prejudice. We’ll have a wine pairing for each of these movies, too. In the 1947 film, Gentleman’s Agreement, bigotry against Jews…
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s imaginative romance is so good, it justifies a lifetime spent seeking out obscure movies. When bad weather stalls a headstrong young woman’s journey to be wed one island short of her goal, she is compelled to reassess everything she wants for her life. Wendy Hiller’s determination to make the smart…
Milestone Film and Video re-premieres a double bill of landmark silent-era documentaries filmed in far-off lands by the dauntless adventurers Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. Grass takes us on a spectacular trek with Irani nomads on a migration in search of greener pastures. Chang investigates life in rural Thailand, with an emphasis on…
He’s Sidney Stratton, Henry Holland, Professor Marcus and a full eight members of the lofty D’Ascoyne family — it’s the best of Alec Guinness’s comedy showcases. The chameleon actor first seen in David Lean classics graduated directly into the class-act comedies of Ealing Studios, working with witty filmmakers that made the words ‘droll and understated’…
It’s an Italo horror with a surprising agenda … the central theme is sadism and torture, but the approach is a slow-going mystery without the expected exploitative diversions. A backwater Italian town would like to forget some bad wartime history as well as some unpleasant business about a murderous mad artist; a visiting art expert…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, wild times with Billy Wilder. We’ll have a wine pairing for each of these three films, too. Wilder co-wrote and directed Fedora in 1978, a production by the West Germans and…
Luis Buñuel’s most personal drama billboards a ‘strange obsession’ yet ends up expressing the full injustice of polite society’s sexual status quo. A pillar of the community marries but finds his skewed notion of a romantic ideal betrayed from the start. Paranoid machismo and toxic jealousy is an entryway to full-on mania. The surreal is…