They were the world's only volcanologist couple, and it was their mutual passion that ultimately brought about their demise. The love shared by Katia and Maurice Krafft wasn’t going to burn out of them, it was only going to get hotter. They saw a side of the planet few will …
The opening is attention-getting, in Michael Winner's pushy, straight-to-hell style, but there is soon nothing to sit still for, or look forward to, other than the promised appearance of Victor Mature, who finally shows up, with his hair in ringlets, in the movie's last half-minute, playing the fourth richest man …
Stephen King, on the overwhelming evidence of the movie adaptations, can seldom be bothered to develop one of his ideas, but then the ideas are seldom worth developing in the first place. The idea here -- the terrible burdensomeness of supernatural powers on their possessor -- is pretty much the …
We’ve devolved to a point in our paranoid history where remaking a movie about an off-the-grid government agency that knowingly employs a pedophiliac child killer to do its bidding could almost be as fresh as today’s headlines. Stephen King’s John Rainbird was such a man, but when it came time …
Run-of-the-mill action film, the first directing effort (why bother?) by cinematographer Dean Semler. Howie Long, the former Oakland (and Los Angeles) Raider defensive lineman and current TV football commentator, a mere second-banana bad guy in Broken Arrow, makes a smooth transition into the hero's slot as a Wyoming "smokejumper," one …
Ridiculous heist-and-hostage thriller that requires the retirement-age Harrison Ford to shoulder altogether too much of the burden of heroics -- all of it, to be exact -- as much as Jean-Claude Van Damme shouldered at half the age. And this in the role of a family-man Seattle banker! Not an …
One fire rages within an innocent Catholic schoolgirl, the other within a guilty-of-vandalism honor-camp inmate. They meet at an improbable mixer -- reminiscent of the Suzanne Pleshette episode of Nevada Smith -- and burn out of control. (Actually they had already met in the forest, when the girl was in …
The final hours of a suicidal alcoholic out-patient, movingly played by Maurice Ronet. One of the grayest of movies, not just visually (the filthy weather, the charcoal-y photography by Ghislain Cloquet), but emotionally and morally as well. The Satie soundtrack does a lot for the movie, but the movie does …
Anime from Akiyuki Shinbô, not to be confused with the Takeshi Katano crime classic.
He lives in the shadows, she lives in the light, and they both want to escape in an action-adventure romance starring Asser Yassin, Lavenia Nader, Amina Khalil, Khaled El Sawy, and Adam El Sharkawy.
Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) also co-writes this story of premarital disillusionment. Any time you get to see a radiant bride-to-be (Taraneh Alidoosti) try on her dress and admire her reflection at the outset, you know that bliss is in the crosshairs. (It’s an even bigger tip-off than the …
Inspired by the true story of two drug dealers who found redemption and faith in Christ within the walls of an international prison, two drug dealers face execution by firing squad due to their crimes but emerge victorious in the end.
Sydney Pollack, back in the paranoia racket of Three Days of the Condor, of mysterious many-tentacled forces and vast invisible conspiracies, offers an au courant variation on the myth of the yuppie dream gone bad. And in this case, as in so many others, made right again by yuppie gumption. …
A purgative for Vietnam veterans' feelings of rejection. Jack Starrett is back in the same role — sadistic law officer — in which he used to aggravate whole gangs of Hell's Angels into tearing apart peaceful small towns; here he gets the same results by aggravating only a single ex-Green …