USA

synopsis
The gangs in the South Bronx (about 80 blocks from Tiffany’s in more ways than one) are handled with kid gloves in this one-hour treatment by Gary Weis. The more articulate members of the Savage Nomads and Savage Skulls are interviewed while the less articulate minorities who incongruously brandish swastikas are glossed over. Aside from gang members venting about “social injustice” and cops, there are interviews with the police, a priest, and some community workers. In general, the documentary indicates that this one small part of the U.S. would gladly be engaged in a mini-civil war if left to ferment on its own.Read More »

It’s 1834. Texas is being strangled by the tyrannical military rule of General Santa Anna (J. Carrol Naish, Canadian Pacific), Mexico’s power-mad president. When frontier hero Jim Bowie (Sterling Hayden, Naked Alibi) returns to his besieged homeland, he finds the embittered Texans plotting rebellion against his old friend Santa Anna. When Santa Anna’s cruel grip tightens around his fellow Texans, Bowie soon realizes he must side against the Mexican despot. Commanding a ragtag regiment of frontier fighters, Bowie prepares to make a final stand at the famed Fort Alamo against superior forces. Though they are all doomed to die, the outnumbered Texan defenders fight heroically for freedom in one of the fiercest and bloodiest battles in American history.Read More »

“McCarthy,” a new two-hour documentary chronicling the remarkable rise and precipitous fall of Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator whose zealous anti-communist crusade would test the limits of American decency and democracy, premieres Monday, January 6, 2020, 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET on American Experience on PBS.Read More »

“Machine Gun or Typewriter? is at once a landscape essay film, a fractious collage piece and an abstract confessional, restlessly serving the film noir narrative trope of a missing woman. Wilkerson plays the radio man, seen only behind a pop screen and a Sennheiser mic, who tells stories about falling in and out of love with his partner, another would-be political reactionary. Each anecdote is tethered to a place, both physically — mapped out with pins and string on the man’s wall — and figuratively: the man’s fury at the injustices perpetrated at these landmarks wrests attention away from the woman who has gone missing. There’s a perverse solace he finds in re-visiting narratives of systemic racism, class divide and police brutality.” Conor Bateman, 4:3Read More »

Emily is the subject of a perverse obsession by a gay neighbor, Andrea, who not only is in lust with her but hires a rapist in order to get audio tapes of her moaning. Andrea turns peeping tom and watches Emily with a telescope as she begins a love affair with Detective CorteseRead More »

Synopsis:
The 4th film of the Columbia series based on the CBS radio program, “The Whistler”, finds wealthy John Sinclair, with no health or friends, being advised by his doctor to take a long vacation. Heading for the Great Lakes, he becomes ill in the cab operated by Ernie Sparrow an is taken to a clinic where he meets nurse Joan Martin, who is engaged to intern Fred Graham. Doctors now tell him he has only a few months to live and advise him to go to Maine (where, evidently, it will seem longer.) He asks Joan to marry him, promising to leave her his fortune. Read More »

SYNOPSIS:
Los Angeles, year 2019. Cynical ex-cop Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a retired assassin of rogue androids (called “replicants”). His former boss, Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh), presses him into service: he is to kill a group of physically superior replicants that are on the loose after escaping from an “off-world” colony. Deckard visits the Tyrell Corporation, where he encounters mogul Eldon Tyrell (Joseph Turkel) and his assistant, Rachael (Sean Young). Tyrell informs Deckard that Rachael is a new breed of replicant–implanted with memories, she believes herself to be human. Bent on speaking to Tyrell in order to find out what their “termination dates” are, two of the replicants–Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) and Pris (Daryl Hannah)–insinuate themselves into the home of geneticist J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson), who created the replicant design for Tyrell. In the meantime, two more of the replicants have been disposed of and Deckard has become romantically obsessed with Rachael.Read More »

Synopsis:
Sergeant Joe Gunn and his tank crew pick up five British soldiers, a Frenchman and a Sudanese man with an Italian prisoner crossing the Libyan Desert to rejoin their command after the fall of Tobruk. Tambul, the Sudanese leads them to an abandoned desert fortress where they hope to find water. Soon a detachment of German soldiers arrives and attempts to barter food for water, but Gunn and his followers refuse. When the Germans attack, Gunn leads his desert-weary men in a desperate battle, hoping that British reinforcements can arrive in time.Read More »

Synopsis:
The Ultimate Western Spoof. A town where everyone seems to be named Johnson is in the way of the railroad. In order to grab their land, Hedley Lemar (Harvey Korman), a politically connected nasty person, sends in his henchmen to make the town unlivable. After the sheriff is killed, the town demands a new sheriff from the Governor (Mel Brooks). Hedley convinces him to send the town the first Black sheriff (Cleavon Little) in the west. Bart is a sophisticated urbanite who will have some difficulty winning over the townspeople.Read More »