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 wine pairings for three films which borrow heavily from the Laurel and Hardy archives (fiddle with tie, do slowburn to double take.) Two are salutations from different eras, while…
First films of important directors usually feel like warm-ups, but not so this suspenseful story of ‘twilight’ people living in and around casinos. Paul Thomas Anderson writes and directs in a style that guarantees our full attention at all times. Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow and Samuel L. Jackson assay riveting…
Castle of the Creeping Flesh Blu ray Severin 1968 / 77 Min. / 1.66:1 Starring Howard Vernon, Janine Reynaud, Michel Lemoine Cinematography by Jorge Herrero Directed by Adrian Hoven Just in time for the holidays, it’s Castle of the Creeping Flesh. The film’s director, Adrian Hoven, helmed a mere seven films but one of them…
A homicidal hockey mascot. A firefighter-turned-fire marshal-turned-Stanley Cup Finals goalie. Lethal gym equipment. A magnificent helicopter escape plan. Lots and lots of roundhouse kicks. All of these elements and more make Sudden Death, released on this date in 1995, the most glorious action extravaganza of superstar Jean-Claude Van Damme’s career. Essentially Die Hard At A…
RKO polished Robert Mitchum’s post- pot bust image with this swell-guy romantic Christmas tale, placing him opposite the drop-dead desirable Janet Leigh. All the penniless Mitchum must do is win over Leigh’s son, get around her fiance Wendell Corey, and then make her forget her dead soldier husband. Plus keep up the Christmas spirit….
Criterion refreshes a bona fide classic with a new remaster and makes their release especially attractive with some well-chosen extras that give us first-person input from writer John Patrick Shanley and star Cher. The show isn’t technically a holiday movie but it plays really well at family gatherings. Heck, even Cher says ‘she can…
Do audiences ever ask for a History Lesson? Robert Altman gives them a smart, if diffuse, image of America as a showbiz invention, commercialized and packaged. Paul Newman is the prepackaged white hero surrounded by a jolly circus; Buffalo Bill’s trick seems to be to get his colleagues, the dispossessed minorities and especially the…
Guest reviewer Matt Rovner delves into the cultural riches of ethnic films specially made for speakers of the Yiddish language. Some were filmed in Poland and others in New Jersey (according to Edgar Ulmer!)… and if they seem obscure they’re nevertheless culturally significant as a record of a language that’s fast disappearing. Among the…
Robert Aldrich promised no-holds barred rough-tough dramas, and his first two Associates & Aldrich productions certainly hit hard. This play adaptation shows its director’s strength (no-flinching full shock impact) and weakness (theatrical overplaying) in full measure, but the unrestrained performances of Jack Palance and Eddie Albert are unforgettable. The main event can’t have pleased…
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 wine pairings for three films starring the late Robert Shaw. Whether you know him as Henry VIII, Doyle Lonnegan or Quint, he was a special talent and deserves a…
This adapted Broadway play may be considered minor John Ford moviemaking, and some sources say he had to drop out before he could film very much of it. But what’s on the screen pleased audiences primed for the first wave of WW2 nostalgia. The story of cargo officer Henry Fonda’s one-man war against his…
Lee Broughton returns with a review of a mammoth limited edition box set dedicated to George A. Romero’s gut-wrenching zombie apocalypse opus, the first sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Fine performances from a quartet of unfamiliar lead actors, hordes of malevolent zombies convincingly brought to life by hundreds of local volunteers, groundbreaking…
More Keaton is always a good thing — fans of The General and The Cameraman will find plenty to enjoy in these two classics. Buster befriends a cow ( ! ) in Go West and conquers several sports in College. Cohen’s Buster Keaton Collection series is up to Volume 4, with both shows featuring…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. You may have heard, they’ve got this pandemic going on. Well, viral is as viral does, so hitch up that mask and delve into the wine pairings for three films of a viral…
Fear No Evil / Ritual of Evil Blu ray Kino Lorber 1969, 1970 / 196 Min. / 1:33.1 Starring Louis Jourdan, Wilfred Hyde-White, Bradford Dillman Cinematography by Andrew J. McIntyre, Lionel Lindon Directed by Paul Wendkos, Robert Day Just as she hops into bed with Charles Aznavour in Shoot the Piano Player, Michèle Mercier exclaims,…
Criterion lets out the stops to celebrate a filmmaker long due for some victory laps — Claudia Weill’s endearing drama takes on the subject of a modern woman trying to be independent but human in the tough art world of New York. The Movies was a hard field to crack as well. Criterion says…
Double your Diabolik and double your pleasure! … this Australian import chases a domestic disc onto the market after only a few months, but of course comes with irresistible new extras to tempt collectors and completists. Mario Bava’s funny, dynamic action thriller was the first feature to really capture the graphic art ‘feeling’ of…
Hulu cements its status as this year’s much-needed rom-com MVP with director/co-writer Clea Duvall’s Happiest Season, the streamer’s Christmas rom-com-dram starring Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, and Aubrey Plaza. After the smashing success of its Groundhog Day-at-a-desert-wedding summer hit Palm Springs, Hulu became the talk of Film Twitter with its starry, splashy, Sony-produced holiday love story….
Talk about the Lost Arts — Animation of various kinds, even stop-motion, is now a major part of filmmaking entertainment. But back in the 1940s the wonder man for ‘how’d they do that’ Technicolor marvels was George Pal, a grateful displaced European who made marvelous ‘trickfilm’ animations using little wooden puppets with hundreds of…
In 2001 I wrote, ‘Someday I’ll get to see a good copy of Robert Aldrich’s great movie Apache.’ Kino’s excellent new Blu-ray of a recent MGM remaster brings back the color and the correct screen shape, and even cleans up some wicked frame damage that’s been there for sixty years. The athletic Burt Lancaster…
CineSavant’s hands-down favorite holiday film, this Ernst Lubitsch classic radiates human kindness in all directions. Nobody is perfect: misunderstandings benign and profound are the gentle impetus for a sweet story that will renew one’s belief that people are basically good. It’s James Stewart’s best pre-war performance, as he fits his character so perfectly; as…
Hammer’s first color Gothic horror show recovers its charnel house luster in the WAC’s ambitious ‘surprise’ restoration. The severed heads and Peter Cushing’s blood-smeared costumes are back to their crimson best again, and with the improved image Terence Fisher’s taut direction really grabs us, extracting maximum impact from Jimmy Sangster’s ‘did you see that?’…
Several atom-fear exposés bravely ‘told the truth’ about the madness of the nuclear standoff. They didn’t get more liberal-precious than this uncompromising, difficult-to-watch ordeal based on a true incident. When an Imminent Attack alarm sends a tiny elementary school into a panic, Frank and Eleanor Perry pull no punches, finding the worst possible outcome…
The new [Imprint] label turns its attention to the Sam Peckinpah favorite, the almost-classic that suffered a number of setbacks — a studio regime change, impractical remote locations, the wrong producer — and a director with zero diplomatic skills, who couldn’t finish his script and fought political battles when his movie needed his full…
HEROES: CLEESE, GILLIAM, IDLE, JONES, PALIN and THE MEANING OF MONTY PYTHON (2013); plus THOUGHTS ON ALEX WINTER’S ZAPPA (2020) As reunions of great collaborators go, it must be one of the least hyperbolic in pop culture history. In 2013, the five surviving members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus—John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry…