A Danish Original and a Canadian Remake
In March 1979 a small scale but offbeat and ingenious little crime drama entitled The Silent Partner slipped into U.S. theaters without any advance word. A Canadian tax shelter write-off, the movie...
View ArticleEarly Animation Shorts by Ray Harryhausen
Special effects wizardry has always been a key component in creating fantasy and futuristic worlds in the cinema and one of the greatest creators in the genre was Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013). Hardcore...
View ArticleThe Haunted Cornea
When Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Hausu (English title: House) opened in Japan in 1977, it proved to be a surprise hit with audiences but not Japanese film critics and it didn’t attract any attention in the...
View ArticleScorched Earth
You don’t have to believe in climate change to experience and understand the devastating effects of a drought. The northeastern part of Brazil is no stranger to this condition which has plagued the...
View ArticleWhen the Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary
Most people have a daily routine from the time they get up in the morning to the time they go to bed at night. For many of us that would involve a considerable amount of time spent at work, whether …...
View ArticleBurning Love
The early 1960s was a turbulent time for the film industry and the Hollywood studio system was becoming a relic of the past as television and other competitors in the entertainment field lured...
View ArticleA Romanian Sci-Fi Adventure
In recent years streaming options for entertainment – movies, TV shows, music – have increased and become more commonplace in the average U.S. household but, at the same time, physical media like...
View ArticlePietro Germi’s Sicilian Marriage Farce
One doesn’t usually expect a film about infidelity, divorce and murder to be a comedy but that’s one reason Divorzio all’italiana (English title: Divorce, Italian Style, 1961) directed by Pietro Germi,...
View ArticlePinko Paranoia
Only two years after WW2 officially ended on September 2, 1945, relations between the United States and the USSR cooled and became frosty, ushering in The Cold War era, which lasted until the...
View ArticleThere is No Joy in Tarrville
What would it be like to live under a totalitarian regime in a godforsaken rural area where society has collapsed under economically depressed circumstances? In a place where there is no work or even a...
View ArticleThe Secret World of Cenci and Leonora
Pretentious art house bomb, neglected masterpiece or inscrutable personal project for Joseph Losey? Secret Ceremony (1968) had the misfortune to follow Boom! (1968), the director’s notoriously...
View ArticleThe Faithful and the Faithless
Some people believe in heaven and the afterlife while others are convinced that human life is temporal and when it ends nothing remains but a corpse. A dramatization of those opposing views in a film...
View ArticlePhantom Playmates
After opening in Spain in the Fall of 2007, Juan Antonio Bayona’s elegant ghost story El Orfanato (English title: The Orphanage) went on to generate enthusiastic word of mouth responses from its many...
View ArticleThe Kidnapped Heiress
When it comes to crime films, what’s your pleasure? The genre breaks down into so many sub-categories that it helps if you have a particular theme in mind. Bank Heists? Home Invasions? Police...
View ArticleThe Birthplace of Jazz
How’s this for a dynamite screen team – Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong? They appear together and separately in New Orleans (1947), a fictitious love story set during the end of the Golden Age of...
View ArticleMetamorphosis of a German Housewife
When German director Alexander Kluge first burst upon the international film scene in 1966 with his debut feature Abschied von Gestern – (Anita G.) aka Yesterday Girl, he was at the forefront of the...
View ArticleNow You See Him, Now You Don’t
Ever notice how every secret agent in the movies seems to have a gimmick? Well, Perry Liston – code name: Matchless – has got a winner. When confronted with unavoidable capture or certain death from...
View ArticleClu Gulager in Sweden
Holdenville, Oklahoma native Clu Gulager was an extremely busy and prolific actor (over 160 TV and movie credits) who worked right up to his death at 93 in August 2022. Even if he never quite graduated...
View ArticleA Filmmaker in Self-Imposed Exile
In the mid-1970s tourists were being warned by a concerned group of local citizens in New York City to steer clear of the Big Apple via a pamphlet campaign. Crime had risen dramatically since the late...
View ArticleAnything for a Laugh
How many movie spoofs can you name which poke fun at World War II espionage dramas AND rock ‘n’ roll musicals? There’s only one and it’s also notable as Val Kilmer’s screen debut – Top Secret! (1984)....
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