In this storyless and humanless paean to woodland creatures (Man is regarded as the eternal enemy, the bringer of fire, destruction, death), the Disney animators are able to give free rein to their appreciation of the natural world, of Romantic landscape, of animals' little idiosyncrasies, of types of weather and …
The City of Intrigue is converted into a large Camp ground, as Bogart feigns broken-heartedness and moral rehabilitation in this feminized thriller. Directed by Michael Curtiz, lushly.
The City of Intrigue is converted into a large Camp ground, as Bogart feigns broken-heartedness and moral rehabilitation in this feminized thriller. Directed by Michael Curtiz, lushly, and presents in 4K restoration.
First (and most profitable) in the line of horror films produced by Val Lewton for RKO in the early Forties, as competition with Universal Studios, at that time dominating the horror field. This one set the pattern for those to follow: no more than seventy-five minutes in length (ideal for …
More weird, more terrifying, than ever before!
As a film for all seasons — one that features musical numbers celebrating everything from Christmas to the 4th of July — 1942’s Holiday Inn was the first (and finest) of three movies to include Bing Crosby chirping “White Christmas.” The star also groans Irving Berlin’s holiday anthem in Blue …
Unexciting, to say nothing of unfrightening, adaptation of an Eric Ambler thriller: the baroque style of Orson Welles generates vague malaise easier than thrills. Officially credited to Norman Foster (who directed some good films, the better of them, such as Rachel and the Stranger, in a plainer-spun, squarer-shouldered style), it …
Orson Welles's second movie, taken from the Booth Tarkington novel, is stronger than his first, Citizen Kane, in most ways -- in coherence, in complexity, in common sense. Welles himself, for a change and for a relief and for a better balance, isn't on screen in this one. The story …
Being dominated by a wealthy, almost maniacal mother was enough to send spinsterly Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) to a sanitarium for an emotional tuneup. Scribbled on the doc’s prescription pad: an ocean voyage, complete with white-hot romance in the arms of an already-spoken-for architect (Paul Henried). Long before makeovers made …
Of Preston Sturges's first seven movies from 1940 to '44, the seven on which his reputation mainly rests, this is the one that could perhaps be least deprivingly bypassed by the spectator, most broadeningly swapped for the later and neglected Unfaithfully Yours. There are treasurable moments, such as the antics …
Hitchcock's formula for cross-country hide-and-seek, tested earlier in The Thirty-Nine Steps and Young and Innocent, lends itself readily to The War Effort in this alarm-ringer about The Enemy Within. In the course of it, Hitchcock finds room for numerous bright ideas that make you sit up in your seat: an …
An adaptation of the Ayn Rand novel about post-revolutionary Russia, produced in wartime Italy and exhumed decades later with "Censored" stamped on it. The suppressed movies of an earlier generation are liable to look pretty untitillating, especially ones suppressed by totalitarian regimes. And in truth this one looks more quaint …
Your mother, father, and sister will thank you for seeing this biopic of George M. Cohan starring James Cagney.