1971-1980

Quote:
As a young couple make out in a car, we hear the woman’s stream of consciousness thoughts. She worries about her reputation and whether he’ll try to “go all the way.”

A short created by Geri Ashur, Andrea Eagan, Marcia Salo Rizzi and Deborah Shaffer, and co-directed by Ashur and Peter Schlaifer, the film is a vibrant document of the early second wave women’s movement, and the concerns and thinking of young women at that time. This film is unique in the Newsreel collection, as it was filmed with actors, with a voice-over script created from a women’s group discussion.Read More »

Quote:
Had Dame Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express” been made into a movie 40 years ago (when it was published here as “Murder on the Calais Coach”), it would have been photographed in black-and-white on a back lot in Burbank or Culver City, with one or two stars and a dozen character actors and studio contract players. Its running time would have been around 67 minutes and it could have been a very respectable B-picture.

“Murder on the Orient Express” wasn’t made into a movie 40 years ago, and after you see the Sidney Lumet production that opened yesterday at the Coronet, you may be both surprised and glad it wasn’t. An earlier adaptation could have interfered with plans to produce this terrifically entertaining super-valentine to a kind of whodunit that may well be one of the last fixed points in our inflationary universe.Read More »

Quote:
A young girl witnesses her brother murder a man through a reflection in a mirror. Twenty years later the mirror is shattered, freeing his evil spirit, which seeks revenge for his death.Read More »

Synopsis
Leon Prochnik adapted the evocative Robert Moresco play Child’s Play for the screen, with Sidney Lumet assuming directorial duties. Beau Bridges stars as a young teacher at an exclusive Catholic boy’s boarding school named Paul Reis. An outbreak of violence and brutality among the students has Reis perplexed. He suspects that one of the older professors is responsible for inciting the mayhem. The two most likely suspects, played by James Mason and Robert Preston, are long-standing rivals who blame each other for the student turmoil. One of the old enemies goes so far as to discredit the other — but his motives are at great odds with the religious doctrine taught within the school’s walls.Read More »

Quote:
Altman shot “Images” (1972) in Ireland during the wet autumn months of 1971, and premiered it the following May at Cannes. It won Susannah York the award for best actress (it’s the role she’s most proud of), but left its Cannes audiences mostly confused. It isn’t the sort of film you feel affectionate about. It’s complex and cold, although not nearly as hard to understand as some of the first reviews suggested.

Columbia picked up the distribution rights (Altman was a hot property in 1971) and entered “Images” in the New York Film Festival. Inexplicably, neither of the two principal film critics for the New York Times (Vincent Canby and Roger Greenspan) chose to review it, and it was dismissed in a blistering and largely unperceptive review by Howard Thompson (“a mishmash”). And that was that. The film never achieved a normal commercial release in America. It had its Chicago-area premiere last February at Northwestern University and its first theatrical 35mm showing last weekend at the Biograph. It undoubtedly will return in one or another repertory series.Read More »

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Spanish: Tráiganme la cabeza de Alfredo García) is a 1974 American cult action film directed by Sam Peckinpah and featuring Warren Oates.

Made in Mexico on a low budget after the commercial failure of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Peckinpah claimed that, of all his films, Alfredo García was the only one released as he had intended. The film was a box-office and critical failure at the time, but has gained a new following and stature in the decades since.

There are two audio commentaries with this posting:
1) with Writer-Producer Gordon Dawson and Film Historian Nick Redman
2) with Film Historians Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons, David Weddle, and Nick Redman

SYNOPSIS:
An American bartender and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a $1 million bounty on the head of a dead gigolo.Read More »

The gangs of Jesse James and Cole Younger join forces for a bungled robbery of the bank in Northfield, MN.

Quote:
In 1876, the Missouri legislature issues a pardon and amnesty to the James and Younger gangs despite many people considering them outlaws. The pardon is because they protected the homesteaders of Clay County against the marauding railroaders, who wouldn’t let anyone or anything get in their way of building the railroad where they wanted. However, the railroad companies and banks still consider them outlaws and will take matters into their own hands if they come across the gangs. Prior to the pardon, Cole Younger had contemplated robbing the First National Bank in Northfield, Minnesota – what is considered the largest bank west of the Mississippi – but has now decided against it. Circumstances, including learning that Jesse James and his gang are going ahead with the robbery behind his back, and that the railroaders issuing a war against them which also includes bribing the legislature to revoke the pardon, make Cole change his mind. But right from the start – even during the planning stages – things don’t go quite according to script, which may be an omen for things to come. Written by Huggo @ IMDB
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Hanzo Itami is an incorruptible Edo officer who learns that an infamous killer has fled from his island prison. Hanzo begins tracking him down using his unorthodox interrogation techniques. Read More »

SYNOPSIS: Having once lived in the same house as young children, Caroline and Robby meet again at summer camp years later. Now 15-years-old, a relationship begins to build between the two old friends, but there are many obstacles getting in the way of their love. The other camp counselors disapprove of the love affair between Caroline and Robby and try everything to keep them apart. At camp, their regiment is strict and the camp director’s only interest is in keeping his campers in tip-top shape through serious exercise routines, and leaving no time for the youngsters to get acquainted. The campers choose to perform a play, Romeo and Juliet, and it is soon discovered that Caroline has competition for Robby’s love after he is chosen for the role of Romeo.Read More »