USA

Synopsis:
When a shipment of repeating rifles is stolen from the U.S. Cavalry, Capt. Haven (Stuart Whitman) and Sgt. Franklyn are sent to recover them and enlist the aid of an alcoholic former confederate and Indian hater, James Lassiter (Richard Boone) and a Mexican murderer, Rodriguez (Tony Franciosa). Lassiter, who owns one of the rifles, says it came from his embittered former commander Col. Pardee, while an Apache woman informant reveals that Pardee intends to sell the stolen arms to her people.Read More »

Synopsis:
In the 1920s, Tennessee schoolteacher Bertram Cates (Dick York) is put on trial for violating the Butler Act, a state law that prohibits public school teachers from teaching evolution instead of creationism. Drawing intense national attention in the media with writer E. K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly) reporting, two of the nation’s leading lawyers go head to head: Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March) for the prosecution, and Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) for the defense.Read More »

Synopsis
Based on a popular novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams, this screwball comedy stars Errol Flynn in the title-role, the heir to an industrial fortune kept hidden from the world by his imperious grandmother (May Robson). Intrigued by the secrecy, peppy Joan Blondell literally crashes the estate to liberate the young man and the two embark on a whirlwind trip through Pennsylvania. Falling in love with the intruder along the way, Flynn learns how life is lived by the other half — or at least by the wacky Warner Bros. stock company — and proves himself to be much more capable than “Grandma” Robson ever imagined. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie GuideRead More »

Sprawling epic which follows the Prescotts, an emigrant family through four generations, from the Erie Canal in the 1830’s to their settled home in the West a half a century later. On the way they encounter river pirates, and escape with the help of fur trapper Linus Rawlings, who subsequently marries one of their daughters, Eve. The parents are drowned on a foundering raft, and the other daughter Lilith becomes a riverboat singer and catches the eye of a genteel adventurer Cleve Van Valen. Read More »

Music icon David Byrne was inspired by tabloid headlines to make his sole foray into feature-film directing, an ode to the extraordinariness of ordinary American life and a distillation of what was in his own idiosyncratic mind. The Talking Heads front man plays a visitor to Virgil, Texas, who introduces us to the citizens of the town during preparations for its Celebration of Specialness. As shot by cinematographer Ed Lachman, Texas becomes a hyperrealistic late-capitalist landscape of endless vistas, shopping malls, and prefab metal buildings. In True Stories, Byrne uses his songs to stitch together pop iconography, voodoo rituals, and a singular variety show—all in the service of uncovering the rich mysteries that lurk under the surface of everyday experience.Read More »

Loosely adapted from William Faulkner’s controversial novel Sanctuary, this notorious pre-Code melodrama stars Miriam Hopkins as Temple Drake, the coquettish granddaughter of a respected small-town judge. When a boozehound date strands her at a bootleggers’ hideout, Temple is subjected to an act of nightmarish sexual violence and plunged into a criminal underworld that threatens to swallow her up completely. Steeped in southern-gothic shadows by influential cinematographer Karl Struss and shot through with moral ambiguity, The Story of Temple Drake is a harrowing vision of sin and salvation that boasts an astonishing lead performance from the fiery Hopkins, whose passage through the stations of terror, trauma, and redemption is a true tour de force of screen acting.Read More »

Quote:
A confident young cop is shown the ropes by a veteran partner in the dangerous gang-controlled barrios of L.A. about to explode in violence in this look at the gang culture enforced by the colors that members wear.Read More »

ArtsEmerson writes:
Hemingway’s crestfallen tale of American expatriates in Europe is faithfully refashioned for the screen in Henry King’s 1957 drama. The Lost Generation’s carousing lifestyles and misguided behavior are depicted much like in the original text, with performances rich in contradiction and nostalgic sentimentality. Leo Tover’s Cinemascope cinematography, elegantly reserved and yet aptly illustrative, imbues a lively atmosphere into the film’s famous Pamplona bullfighting scene, and the screenplay retains much of the distinct syntax and rhythm of Hemingway’s printed dialogue.Read More »

Quote:
A starship crew goes to investigate the silence of a planet’s colony only to find two survivors and a deadly secret that one of them has.Read More »