How, with that attitude, did the filmmakers finish their work without falling on their bayonets? Fred Dryer, the former football player, makes a reasonable economy model of Clint Eastwood (not economy-sized, though), with a face carved by hatchet and a simmering sense of menace. But even Eastwood would be no …
A sort of Ronald Reagan tropical melodrama riddled by Luis Buñuel with good, nasty, subversive gags. E.g., Michel Piccoli's devout Catholic missionary, obliged to pretend to a vigilante mob that he has spent the night with a prostitute, hangs his head with hand-in-the-cookie-jar shame while the mob whoops with laughter; …
Luchino Visconti's beautifully cadenced rendition of the Thomas Mann novella. In slow zooms and panning shots, it scrutinizes the deterioration, amid wilting heat and epidemic, of a prissy musical composer, lingering too long at a deluxe hotel, held there by the physical magnetism and riveting gaze of an aesthetic-erotic ideal …
Following in Albert Finney's footprints, Peter Ustinov perpetuates the corpulent screen image of master detective Hercule Poirot, but this balloon-like inflation (nearer to Nero Wolfe) will be a bother only to the most fanatical followers of Agatha Christie, the queen of the "who cares?" whodunit. In this one, the murder …
There are sufficient amounts of imagination and energy here to fuel a brisk improvisational sketch. But the material -- broad indictments of American hero worship, car cultism, and bloodthirst, plus broad impressions of TV personalities -- is stretched to cover a feature-length, coast-to-coast car race (the territory crossed all looks …
Garishly dark comedy, if that's imaginable, set in the cutthroat world of children's television. KidNet's star attraction, Rainbow Randolph, is exposed as a "degenerate scumbag," forcing the network to replace him with foursquare Smoochy the Rhino: "He's a bottle of pancake syrup with legs." Danny DeVito directs him to death, …
Comedy-thriller in the Sleuth mold, similar to the aforesaid down to having a writer of thrillers as its devious protagonist, and to having its origins undisguisably on the stage. It would be difficult to foresee every tricksy plot twist, and yet it would be difficult to be truly surprised by …
The title might raise hopes that the director of the underrated Culpepper Cattle Company had returned to the Western genre. Any such hopes would quickly be dashed, although a certain amount of Western flavor creeps in through the Frontier Town tourist trap, the late show on the motel TV, and …
A nightmare of New York City streets swarmed over by hopped-up hooligans who flit and slither like rejects from a West Side Story audition. In effect, this Michael Winner exercise picks up from the baleful curtain line of his previous movie, Stone Killer: "You've got five more minutes, Christians!" Winner …
The Roman numeral of the prior sequel has been dropped in preference for Arabic, and if the reason were simple forgetfulness it would not be surprising. Also forgotten, or unmentioned, is the fact that the hero was ever anything so mundane as an architect. He has settled instead into the …
Bronson, p.o.'d this time because his ladyfriend's daughter o.d.'d on coke, is given a handy membership list of the two major drug gangs in L.A. From there, it's all business and no fun. He has a different director from that of his first three WISHES -- J. Lee Thompson instead …
Charles Bronson continues to run in bad luck. Now resettled in Los Angeles (perhaps he would have done better to select Minot, North Dakota), he has his pocket picked, his home invaded, his housekeeper gang-raped and murdered, and his daughter, still in shock from her earlier mugger encounter, abducted, raped, …
A low-tech, low-budget, low-profile Charlie's Angels, with an uncloseted lesbian agenda. The top student at an all-girl spy school is writing her thesis on the elusive criminal mastermind, Lucy Diamond, when she gets to meet her subject face to face: "You're so not what I expected." The feeling is reciprocated: …
Tried-and-true thriller formula: the husband who's not the man his wife thinks he is. Aside from him and her, this one's a bit underpopulated (Goldie Hawn not being the most sharing kind of star) and, partly because of that, a bit unsurprising. But not undiverting even so. Smooth, slow, ominous; …
Based on the classic Michael Noonan novel, "December Boys" is the story of four orphan teenagers growing up behind the closed doors of a Catholic convent in outback Australia during the 1960s. As the boys watch younger kids get adopted by loving families, they begin to realize that as they …