USA

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A documentary about actor/director Dennis Hopper, showing him at his home and studio putting together his film “The Last Movie.”Read More »

Rod Steiger plays a benumbed Jewish survivor of the concentration camps who lives on in Harlem running a pawnship–fat, sagging, past pain, past caring. Adapted from the Edward Lewis Wallant novel and directed by Sidney Lumet, the film is trite, and you can see the big pushes for powerful effects, yet it isn’t negligible. It wrenches audiences, making them fear that they, too, could become like this man. And when events strip off his armor, he doesn’t discover a new, warm humanity, he discovers sharper suffering–just what his armor had protected him from. Most of the intensity comes from Steiger’s performance and from the performance of the great old Juano Hernandez, as a man who comes into the shop to talk.

-Pauline KaelRead More »

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White Heat (1949) is one of the top classic crime-heist dramas of the post-war period, and one of the last of Warner Bros’ gritty crime films in its era. White Heat is an entertaining, fascinating and hypnotic portrait of a flamboyant, mother-dominated and fixated, epileptic and psychotic killer, who often spouts crude bits of humor. The dynamic film, with both film noir and documentary-style elements, is characterized by an increased level of violence and brutality along with classical Greek elements.Read More »

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Early Talkie titanness Dorothy Mackaill stars in this steamy pairing of racy dramas that tested the limits of the censors – and of marriage! The Office Wife features Mackaill playing a “welcome danger to the tired businessman” while sharing the screen alongside a scene-stealing and clothes-shedding Joan Blondell (in her sophomore screen appearance!). Party Husband finds ex-Ziegfield Girl Dorothy playing the better half of a thoroughly “modern marriage” whose openness threatens to bring about its premature end. Fellow Ziegfield alum Mary Doran plays the coquette whose intended conquest of the free-thinking hubby (James Rennie) starts to throw the couple’s “understanding” awry. From Warner Brothers!Read More »

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Oft-filmed black-and-white thriller of coincidence or inexorable fate based on the popular play by W.W. Jacobs. The Monkey’s Paw was filmed at Kay Carlton Hill Studios at St Johns Wood in London by low-budget producers Butchers. Despite its atmospheric finale amid the thunder and rain, the films expectant chills fail to materialise leaving only a tale of morality.

A curio shop owner sells a monkey’s paw an antiques dealer (Sydney Tafler) that can grant three wishes, but warns it has its drawbacks and tragedy follows each wish. The paw comes into the possession of Irish shopkeeper Trelawne (Milton Rosmer) who needs to pay off his gambling debts. As a consequence his son Tom is killed in a speedway race; the compensation pays the debt. Mrs Trelawne (Megs Jenkins) wishes her son back to life but her husband counters this by wishing he rest in peace.Read More »

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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 »

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The Executioner’s Song is one of the best films about crime and punishment ever made. Far from being lurid or simpleminded, it paints a stark picture of how it must have been to live around Gilmore during that time. It doesn’t glamorize him or turn him into a cardboard villain, but instead depicts him as a man whose inability to handle his growing rage and alienation led him to destroy his life and the lives of those around him. It’s smart enough to know that there can never be a definitive answer as to why someone would commit murder, but that it’s also important to try to understand those reasons nonetheless. It’s also a vital film whatever your views on the issue of capital punishment, as it renders many clichés on the subject useless (and predates the more acclaimed Dead Man Walking by a good thirteen years). Add one of the finest performances of Tommy Lee Jones’ career, and The Executioner’s Song is highly recommended for anyone interested in a thoughtful crime drama.Read More »

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Rebecca is a 1940 psychological/dramatic noir thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock as his first American project, and his first film produced under his contract with David O. Selznick. The film’s screenplay was an adaptation by Joan Harrison and Robert E. Sherwood from Philip MacDonald and Michael Hogan’s adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel of the same name, and was produced by Selznick.[1] It stars Laurence Olivier as the aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter, Joan Fontaine as his second wife, and Judith Anderson as the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers.Read More »

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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 »