Modern-day pulp Western, hard-boiled to suit the modern-day taste, concerning a one-armed war veteran (Spencer Tracy) bringing to light the deep dark secret of a sun-baked desert town. Director John Sturges's resourceful use of the then new Cinemascope format nicely captures the arid spaciousness and siesta atmosphere of the setting. …
A uranium treasure hunt in very clique-y company (Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Robert Morley, Gina Lollobrigida, Jennifer Jones), this cult item is often pulled down from the shelves as an early example of conscious Camping (not to be confused with unconscious Camp), although another Bogart-Huston collaboration, The Maltese Falcon, a …
Jack Arnold's 3-D horror film (the horror is lost in the fog) features an indifferent actor, possessed of a nonchalant swimming stroke and dressed in a lizard suit, who terrorizes some bird-brained explorers on a jungle set that's supposed to pass for the untravelled reaches of the Amazon. With Richard …
Frederick Knott's theatrical thriller, forever a staple of provincial playhouses, comes to the screen under the aegis of Alfred Hitchcock (Notorious). Its cinematization, however, depends not so much on any overt attacks on its staginess and talkiness as on the simple imposition of 3-D; and not so much on any …
Frederick Knott's theatrical thriller, forever a staple of provincial playhouses, comes to the screen under the aegis of Alfred Hitchcock (Notorious). Its cinematization, however, depends not so much on any overt attacks on its staginess and talkiness as on the simple imposition of 3-D; and not so much on any …
Jean Renoir's backstage musical provides plenty of opportunities for short naps while following the fortunes of discontented shopgirls and licentious showbizzers in a harshly colorful, turn-of-the-century Paris. Finally the energy is gathered for a big finale, as Renoir switches back and forth, didactically and thrillingly, between Jean Gabin musing in …
The black-and-white original, fully restored for its fiftieth anniversary, with English subtitles in place of dubbing, and no trace of Raymond Burr, comes across predictably as crude, primitive, and ineffective, a grade-Z monster movie in any language. Those selfsame qualities, however, have their advantages in the special-effects department — the …
Publicity-seeking actress rents a billboard and gets what she seeks. The one and only Judy Holliday in one of her only seven leading roles -- recommendation enough. Jack Lemmon appears in his first screen role as a bonus. Written by Garson Kanin; directed by George Cukor.
The first of Douglas Sirk's series of Technicolor soap operas (and one of his handful of remakes of John Stahl's black-and-white soap operas) that so endeared him to R.W. Fassbinder, among other cultists and auteurists. The storyline, from Lloyd C. Douglas's mystico-romantic novel about a young wastrel who hopes to …
The things that can go haywire at a Riviera resort. By and with Jacques Tati, cold, mechanical, precious, and French, and quite apart from all that, occasionally actually funny.
Elia Kazan's multi-Oscar-winner about racketeers on the New York docks and the broken-down, battle-scarred boxer who blows the whistle. (The revisionist view, in light of Kazan's naming of names to HUAC, is to see it as a rationale for ratting.) Marlon Brando, in a floridly indelible performance, is the sensitive …
A premise with broad appeal for the casual and occasional voyeur: a globe-trotting photojournalist, confined to a wheelchair with a broken leg, whiling away the hours of a summer hot spell by spying on his neighbors around the tenement courtyard, begins to suspect the neighbor across the way of having …
Kurosawa's inspiring action film — inspiring particularly to John Sturges's The Magnificent Seven — about a loose-knit team of free-spirited, unemployed samurai who are hired for pittance to defend a farming village against the local huns. The movie itself could be called loose-knit too; but because the action scenes, like …