1955’s "Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy" finds Bud and Lou tackling the immortal Wrapped One in the same irreverent manner they encountered all of the legendary Universal monsters, starting with "Abbott and Costello Meet [...]
Tony Richardson’s disjointed, sluggish adaptation of John Irving’s novel ’The Hotel New Hampshire’ charts the tribulations of the oddball Berry clan. How weird are they? ’Father’ (Beau Bridges) perpetually dreams of running any hotel named [...]
Joseph Mankiewicz’s ’The Barefoot Contessa’ represents something of an ill-fitting hybrid. The lighting-fast quips and juicy bon mots are signature Mankiewicz and 1950’s American cinema, yet the pacing and storytelling manner are very much of [...]
F.W. Murnau’s 1926 fantasy epic ’Faust’ centers on the timeless battle between good and evil. Mephistopheles (Emil Jannings under a host of disguises) wagers an angelic emissary that he can corrupt Faust’s spirit, with the damnation of all [...]
I consider myself fairly intelligent when it comes to deciphering arcane symbolism in movies. Dang if I can figure out one of the stranger entries of 1970’s science fiction cinema, Robert Fuest’s "The Last Programme." Chronologically nestled [...]
I had never heard of filmmaker Jean Pierre Melville before viewing Anchor Bay’s new DVD of his 1971 gangster flick "Un Flic." (Translated as "A Cop, " the title for its initial stateside release was "Dirty Money.") One [...]
"Tomorrow" finally arrived on January 1st this year. For anyone who grew up with "2001: A Space Odyssey, " Stanley Kubrick’s epic visual tone poem about man and his place/ill fit in the universe, that number always represented the [...]
Genius. Recluse. Tyrant. Director Stanley Kubrick went by many names during his amazing career. His cool, often unsympathetic eye gave the world such genuine original visions as "Paths of Glory, " "Dr. Strangelove, " "2001: A [...]
"Traffic, " Steven Soderbergh’s sprawling mosaic of a population under siege by a virulent enemy called drugs, arrives on DVD from USA Home Entertainment. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Director (Soderbergh), Best Supporting [...]
William Wyler’s epic Western ’The Big Country’ stars Gregory Peck as Jim McKay, an East Coast born sea captain engaged to Patricia Terrell (Carroll Baker), daughter of Texas cattle baron Henry Terrell (Charles Bickford). Trading in his sextant for a [...]
