Adolf, Eva and Guests in Bavaria
Still shrouded in mystery and speculation by historical experts, the final days of Adolf Hitler remain a subject of endless fascination for many. It’s certainly been the focus of several films such as...
View ArticleBasketball Jocks and Pom Pom Girls
The film debut of a soon-to-be-major movie star is not always an event of any significance when it first occurs. Nor is it often a movie with any artistic merit that can stand the test of time and...
View ArticleThe Pairans Are Among Us
The early 1950s is generally regarded as the time when science fiction truly became a popular and profitable film genre thanks to a number of pioneering efforts from Hollywood such as The Day the Earth...
View ArticleFotoromanzi Fantasy
“With Paisan, I knew that I wanted to be a film director. I thought maybe this was where my future was, not as a journalist. It was with The White Sheik that I knew I was a film director.” – … Continue...
View ArticleMan of Mystery
In May 1828 a young man appeared in a town square in Nuremberg, Germany carrying a prayer book and two letters written by his former caretaker. He spoke very little and was unable to answer any...
View ArticleJoe Orton’s Impolite Farce
Black comedy may be an acquired taste but it still takes a clever and wickedly funny practitioner of the form to pull it off and Joe Orton was one of the best. The enfant terrible of British theatre in...
View ArticleIntertwined Destinies
The American West as seen through the eyes of a French filmmaker provides a curious and offbeat approach to the genre in Another Man, Another Chance (1977), directed by Claude Lelouch, whose most...
View ArticleEasy Rawlins: Private Eye
For avid readers of mystery and crime novels, the stories of African-American novelist Walter Mosley featuring his detective hero Easy Rawlins were a unique and welcome addition to an overly familiar...
View ArticleIn the Doghouse
Sigrid, a part-time cashier and psychology student, wants some romance in her life and feels empowered to arrange a meet-up on the Tinder dating app with Christian. They meet for drinks at a café and...
View ArticleThe Suburban Sex Underground
When did mate swapping parties and swinging singles soirees in suburbia in America become a social phenomenon? Some say it began during the Korean War (1950-1953) among married couples on army bases...
View ArticleLaw of the Yukon
It is not a surprise that novelist/journalist Jack London was the most popular writer of the early 20th century and he enjoyed an international readership, especially in Japan, Eastern Europe and...
View ArticleBuilding the Ultimate Superhero
Richard Harrison is not a name most moviegoers in the U.S. are probably familiar with but film buffs around the world know him as one of the American actors who relocated to Italy in the early sixties...
View ArticleCinema Interruptus
All of us have probably walked out on a movie at the theatre at some point in our lives but how often have you been forced to leave a film due to circumstances beyond your control? The few times this …...
View ArticleA Warrior’s Path to Redemption
The samurai film in Japanese cinema was often classified as a chanbara, a sub-category of the jidai-geki (period drama) which was more action oriented. The chanbara was at the peak of its popularity in...
View ArticleThe Spider and the Fly
Most film critics and movie lovers point to Nashville (1975) as Robert Altman’s masterpiece, although I’ve always been partial to his unique spin on the Western, McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). I also...
View ArticleThe Mysterious Language of Twins
In 1977 journalists became fascinated with a story about six-year-old twin sisters in San Diego who spoke in a language no one could understand but was the sole means of communication between the two...
View ArticleAll in the Family
If you had gone to a movie theater showing Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead in 2007 without knowing anything about it or who directed it, you’d probably think it was the work of a dynamic new...
View ArticleIn the Realm of Carson McCullers
When people talk about Southern Gothic literature, they are usually referring to writers such as William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O’Connor, Erskine Caldwell and Carson McCullers and...
View ArticlePedro Costa’s O Sangre
Most film aficionados known that the Cinema Novo movement of the 1960s in Brazil was influenced by both Neorealism and New Wave filmmakers but became an identifiable style of its own. Portugal also had...
View ArticleCity Unplugged
Movies about an ingenious heist or an elaborately staged robbery always come with set expectations from genre enthusiasts. Can they meet or surpass the gold bar standard set by earlier classics such as...
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