Off the Grid
A master of 20th century cinema, the Swedish director and actor Victor Sjöström is best remembered for his moving performance as the elderly physician reflecting on his life in Wild Strawberries...
View ArticleA Marriage of Convenience?
Almost everyone has a good reason for why they want to get married but for Hugues, there is a very specific need. He wants to find a woman with a place of her own, preferably one with ample square...
View ArticleParty Out of Bounds
Tired of reading about new DVD/Blu-ray releases that are being released in other parts of the world but are not viewable here because they are produced in a different broadcast format? (The U.S....
View ArticleThe Family Mole
If you are a post-WW2 baby boomer, you are probably familiar with the term ‘the Red Scare,’ which refers to a time in the late forties-early fifties when anti-communist sentiment in the U.S. was at its...
View ArticleTarot Cards, Talismans, Seances and Telekinesis
People usually have certain expectations when they invest the time to watch a movie, especially if it has been advertised as a genre film like a western, sci-fi or horror thriller. This must have been...
View ArticlePostcards from the Edge: Louis Malle in India
Unaccountably missing or overlooked on most reviewers’ top DVD releases of 2007 was a remarkable set from Eclipse (Criterion’s no frills, affordable editions division) – The Documentaries of Louis...
View ArticleRaymond Burr + Natalie Wood = Cute Couple
You probably couldn’t find a more unlikely friendship in Hollywood during the fifties than the one between Raymond Burr and Natalie Wood but most biographies of Wood document this little-known period...
View ArticleLife After the Bomb
What would life be like after a global apocalyptic event or would there be any life at all? It is certainly a topic that has inspired filmmakers to create an entire subgenre upon the premise. Some of...
View ArticleThomas Schamoni’s Almost Forgotten 1970 Experiment from the New German Cinema...
The New German Cinema of the late sixties-early seventies introduced the world to some of the most original and provocative filmmakers of the 20th century such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders,...
View ArticleGrowing Pains
I’m a sucker for any film starring Tuesday Weld. Ditto any high school/teen angst/juvenile delinquent flick from the fifties and sixties. Toss in American radio and TV personality Dick Clark in his...
View ArticleIn the Kingdom of G
In the film world of the 20th century, there were not too many animators who made the transition to live action feature film directing. Certainly Frank Tashlin was one of the most famous, going from...
View ArticleThe Cunning Inspector Cockrill
Most movie lovers know Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge in the perennial holiday favorite, A Christmas Carol, the 1951 version. He is also memorable for his supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage...
View ArticleNothing is Off Limits: The Art of Eva Hesse
Most major art movements in America during the 20th century were mostly led and dominated by male artists but the post-minimalist movement that emerged in the mid-1960s in New York City was unique for...
View ArticleSuperdrago to the Rescue
One of countless Eurospy actioners released in the wake of the James Bond film craze in the sixties, Secret Agent Super Dragon (aka New York chiama Superdrago, 1966) has been mercilessly ridiculed on...
View ArticleThe Lost Ones
At the end of WW2, it was estimated that more than 6 million people had been displaced from their homes and roughly 180,000 of these were children. Some were concentration camp survivors, other were...
View ArticleJohnny Cash in His Film Debut
Even hardcore fans of the “Man in Black” might not know that back in 1961 the bad boy of country-western music decided to dabble in motion pictures and made his film debut in a low-budget wonder...
View ArticleThe Isabelle Huppert Revelation
There was a period of time from around 2000 to 2012 when it seemed like every major French movie that received distribution in the U.S. featured Isabelle Huppert as the female lead. Did she have some...
View ArticleIce Capades
George Roy Hill is a name that should be familiar to most movie fans. Although his claim to fame mostly rests on two Paul Newman-Robert Redford hits, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The...
View ArticleHell is Other People
A random group of strangers being forced to share close quarters during an impending disaster or emergency situation is a familiar trope in genre films. The situation becomes even more dire when most...
View ArticlePlaylists for the Apollo Space Missions
July 20, 2021 will mark the 52nd anniversary of man’s first moon landing by Apollo 11 and the perfect way to celebrate the event is to watch Al Reinert’s 1989 documentary on the Apollo space program,...
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