USA

Gary Tooze writes:
Produced and directed by the prestigious Frank Lloyd, The Shanghai Story was promoted as a “class” production by the bread-and-butter firm of Republic Pictures. The film takes place in the eponymous far-eastern metropolis (courtesy of the Republic backlot), where Communist police chief Colonel Zorek (Marvin Miller) hopes to trap an American spy. Zorek rounds up the usual suspects and sequesters them in a seedy hotel. Could the spy be Dan Maynard (Edmond O’Brien), a cynical doctor? Is it munitions profiteer Ricki Dolmine (Barry Kelley)? Perhaps it’s two-fisted mercenary seaman Knuckles Greer (Richard Jaeckel). Orrrrrrr, maybe it’s the mysterious Rita King (Ruth Roman), who is inexplicably given permission to come and go as she pleases by the otherwise intractable Zorek. True to form, this Republic A-picture resolves its problems with a final reel of good old B-flick action and violence.Read More »

An an animated candy colored nightmare from indie artist Suzan Pitt.Read More »

A snapshot of a young woman who feels deeply the value and vulnerability of everyone’s life but her own. Pica, our hero, is a girl with a mission. Armed with a Polaroid camera, and charming savvy, she is determined to document the existence of young black men. She, like many, is convinced that they are an endangered species – soon to be extinct. Her obsessive snaphots lead her to many eccentric neighborhood characters who force her to recognize the value of her own life and work.Read More »

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One of the later examples of American film noir, The Big Heat is also one of the genre’s most underrated films. Director Fritz Lang utilized many of the elements typical to his other films: unseen yet gruesome violence, relentless pacing, and a hardboiled view of justice and revenge. The sad, realist film has an oppressive feeling of malignity. Glenn Ford is a perfect everyman cop, out for revenge against criminals as well as other cops. In this way, The Big Heat marks a significant transition between the crime movies of two different eras. Read More »

Queen is a ribald hour-long documentary about a “Miss All-American Beauty” contest held in New York in 1967. So what, you say? Well, it happens that all the contestants are male transvestites — and some of them are real knockouts. Alternately hilarious and depressing, Queen was considered the cutting edge of obscene outrageousness when originally distributed by Grove Press (the publishers of several above-the-counter “alternative” magazines of the 1960s). Nowadays it’s practically kid stuff, thanks to the surfeit of TV tabloids and Fox Network sitcoms.allmovie.comRead More »

PLOT DESCRIPTION
The Forgotten Village in this powerful 68-minute documentary is an unnamed, poverty-stricken Mexican community. Living in deplorable conditions, the villagers must not only contend with the elements but with their own lack of inner resourcefulness. In grim detail, the film records the life-cycle of a typical peasant family, from birth to death. Perhaps as a sop to the Mexican authorities, the film ends with the assurance that new government programs have been placed into effect to help the unfortunates depicted on screen. The narration for The Forgotten Village was written by novelist John Steinbeck and spoken by Burgess Meredith, who in 1939 starred in the film version of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideRead More »

“With her Oscar-winning turn in Klute, Jane Fonda reinvented herself as a new kind of movie star. Bringing nervy audacity and counterculture style to the role of Bree Daniels—a call girl and aspiring actor who becomes the focal point of a missing-person investigation when detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) turns up at her door—Fonda made the film her own, putting an independent woman and escort on-screen with a frankness that had not yet been attempted in Hollywood. Suffused with paranoia by the conspiracy-thriller specialist Alan J. Pakula, and lensed by master cinematographer Gordon Willis, Klute is a character study thick with dread, capturing the mood of early-1970s New York and the predicament of a woman trying to find her own way on the fringes of society.”Read More »

Synopsis:
Brillant pianist Larry Addams allows his frustrated ambitions to ruin his life and commits suicide, leaving his wife, Lee, and two small children, Penny and Chase, under the stigma of disgrace. Lee takes over and devotes her life to paying off Larry’s debts and raising her two step-children. Prior to her marriage, Lee had turned down the proposal of Chris Matthews, wealthy ship builder and college friend of Larry’s, but he had remained as a true friend to both. On the night of the suicide, Lee and Chris had attended a dinner party together and, horrified and shocked at the death, Lee sends Chris away, and for ten years does everything possible for the children to make up for the loss of their father. Bewildered by some of the strange stories concerning her father, the grown-up Penny (June Allyson) questions Lee and her brother Chase. Later, Penny meets and falls in love with Chris, not realizing he is the man Lee gave up.Read More »

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Legendary director Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen, The Grissom Gang) turns up the heat in this steamy, provocative and expertly executed movie starring Beryl Reid (Trial and Error) and Susannah York (The Maids, Gold). Sexy, sensitive and darkly humorous, The Killing of Sister George is a racy romp that’s entertaining, explicit and sensational. June (Reid) is the star of a TV soap opera… and she has the ego to prove it. But when she begins to suspect that the network is planning to kill off her character—and that her boss is out to seduce her beautiful young lover (York)—June spirals out of control. And as she’s transformed from demanding diva into hair-trigger harridan, TV’s grandest of dames proves that underneath it all… she ain’t no lady. Coral Browne (The Ruling Class) and Patricia Medina (Sangaree) co-stars in this classic drama with a dark sense of humor.Read More »