Synopsis:
Five college students take time off to spend a peaceful vacation in a remote cabin. A book and audio tape is discovered, and its evil is found to be powerful once the incantations are read out loud. The friends find themselves helpless to stop the evil as it takes them one by one, with only one survivor left with the evil dead and desperately tries to fight to live until morning.Read More »
American Wartime Film: Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas (1943)
by Carl Savich
The 1943 American movie Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas is a time capsule that shows how Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas were integral parts of the American and Allied war effort. At the height of World War II in 1943, the movie demonstrated their influence and impact on the “greatest generation”. The movie had a widespread impact not only on the American home front, but globally as well. The American public needed a symbol of resistance and defiance, a sparkplug to get Americans going after years of slumber, to galvanize public opinion and morale in the United States. Draza Mihailovich represented determination, defiance, and indefatigable will.Read More »
W.C. Handy has been called “The Father of the Blues”, although he modestly said that he merely transcribed the music and made it available to a wide audience. Nevertheless, his music defined the blues, the best known being “St. Louis Blues”, which was used as the title of the film biography Paramount Studios made of his life in 1958. The cast of St. Louis Blues reads like a list of some of the best African-American talent of the mid 20th Century: Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson, Ruby Dee, Juano Hernandez, and Pearl Bailey. There is also a future star in the cast: the young boy who plays W.C. Handy as a child would grow up to make a name for himself ten years later when he played with The Beatles: Billy Preston.Read More »
Synopsis:
Lew Harper is a Los Angeles based private investigator whose marriage to Susan Harper, who he still loves, is ending in imminent divorce since she can’t stand being second fiddle to his work, which is always taking him away at the most inopportune of times. His latest client is tough talking and physically disabled Elaine Sampson, who wants him to find her wealthy husband, Ralph Sampson, missing now for twenty-four hours, ever since he disappeared at Van Nuys Airport after having just arrived from Vegas. No one seems to like Ralph, Elaine included. Read More »
Synopsis:
John Wayne toplines this biography of the cattle owner John Simpson Chisum, a controversial figure who was the most powerful man in New Mexico during the Wild West era. A founder and prominent citizen in the town of Lincoln, Chisum is slow to act when ruthless land baron Lawrence Murphy (Forrest Tucker) moves in on several local businesses and takes them over. By the time Chisum and his ally, fellow rancher Henry Tunstall (Patrick Knowles), decide to go to the law, Murphy’s already bought and paid for influence there, as well. The only recourse left to the cattlemen is to take Murphy on in all-out range war that embroils everyone in the county, including Tunstall’s hand Billy the Kid Bonney (Geoffrey Deuel) and his comrade Pat Garrett (Glenn Corbett). Screenwriter and producer Andrew J. Fenady based the script for Chisum (1970) on his own short story, a very loosely fact-based account of Chisum, Billy the Kid and their involvement in the Lincoln County wars.Read More »
This low-key, well-acted, underrated and pitch-black comedy didn’t get the recognition it deserved upon it’s (limited) release in 1994, even with director Michael Tolkin’s stature as screenwriter of ‘The Player’ and his freaky directorial debut with ‘The Rapture’. Peter Weller and Judy Davis play wealthy but spirtually bereft professionals in LA who decide to ditch their previous lives and open a store. It goes badly rather quickly. Watch for Adam West, perfectly cast as Peter Weller’s hipster father.Read More »
Plot Synopsis:
A reporter recognizes some Nazi spies on a train and soon realizes that they’re after a particular piece of luggage. Little does any of them suspect that the contents of that bag may be the death of everyone on board!Read More »
Eastman Museum writes:
According to Quentin Tarantino, his eighth and latest film not only pays homage to that peculiar brand of the western set not in dust but in snow, but also an even more peculiar genre of the so-called parlor room mystery. André De Toth’s criminally underrated Day of the Outlaw happened to mine a similar territory in 1959: Set in an isolated, snow-covered town in the far West, the story has a renegade army officer named Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives) and his henchmen riding into the town threatening their worst to the men and women there. Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) decides to agree to Bruhn’s demands for someone knowledgeable to lead them away from the law and the town, to safety. Mortally wounded himself, Bruhn opts to take Starrett up on his offer in one last act of generosity toward the townspeople, sparing them the mayhem threatened by his men.Read More »
PLOT
Lane (Mia Farrow), who is recovering from a suicide attempt in her house in the country during the tail end of summer. Local widower Howard (Denholm Elliott) has befriended her. Her friend Stephanie (Dianne Wiest) is spending the month with her, and her mother, Diane (Elaine Stritch), and stepfather (Jack Warden) come to visit. It is a story of unrequited love, betrayal, selfishness, and loneliness.Read More »