[6] Sam Elliott plays an L.A. beach lifeguard who begins to question, at the age of thirty-two, if it might finally be time to put on a shirt and get a ‘real’ job. There’s no question that Sam Elliott has charisma and can carry a movie, and that’s probably the only reason this flick has had any shelf life at all. Lifeguard is decidedly a …
[7] Kerwin Mathews (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) stars an American painter who strikes up an affair with mother and daughter barkeeps in rural France. He agrees to help them break their patriarch from an asylum where he’s been sentenced for murdering the daughter’s rapist with a blowtorch four years earlier. They go through with the plan, but come to regret it when they discover …
[5] Joan Crawford plays an impoverished woman who leaves her husband after a tragedy claims the life of their young son. Determined never to be poor again, she sleeps her way through a string of men to reach a higher social standing. But once she ingratiates herself with gangsters, she gets in over her head. The Damned Don’t Cry delivers the typical Joan Crawford character …
[7] Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) gives a powerhouse performance as a ruthless, court-appointed legal guardian who preys upon her elderly wards, draining their savings and selling off their assets for her own financial gain. But she finally meets her match in an elderly woman (Dianne Wiest) with a mysterious past whose dangerous acquaintance (Peter Dinklage) threatens to topple the profiteering empire Pike has built for …
[3] Boris Karloff stars as a doctor who transplants the brain of a gangster into the body of a dying professor (both played by Stanley Ridges), then tries to get the convalescing professor to remember — with his new brain — where the gangster hid half a million dollars. Once they visit the gangster’s old stomping grounds, the memories come flooding back and the professor …
[8] Barbara Stanwyck stars in this pre-code drama about a scrappy young nurse trying to save two sick children from an evil chauffeur (Clark Gable) whose poisoning them so he can marry their drunk mother (Charlotte Merriam) and steal their trust fund. Night Nurse is a great vehicle for Stanwyck, who spends the first half of the film befriending wise-cracking Joan Blondell and falling in …
[5] Alfred Hitchcock’s first sound film is emblematic of his usual content, if not his his trademark style and suspense. Murder! centers around an actress (Diana Baring) found in a fugue state next to a bloody fire poker and a murdered acquaintance. After she’s convicted of the crime and sentenced to death, a skeptical juror (Herbert Marshall) — a fellow actor in a local troup …
[5] Paul Newman stars in this L.A. detective story from director Robert Benton (Kramer vs Kramer), about a down-on-his-luck P.I. who lives with two movie stars (Susan Sarandon and Gene Hackman) who are married to each other. Newman starts to get suspicious, though, when Hackman sends him to deliver money to someone, only to discover a murder has taken place. The murder leads to clues …
[7] Four struggling women successfully rob a bank, but push their luck with additional robberies while the L.A. police is on their tail. Director F. Gary Gray (Friday, Straight Outta Compton) doesn’t glorify the crime in Set It Off. Instead, he and screenwriters Takashi Bufford and Kate Lanier show us what leads these women to such desperate measures. The script gives actors Jada Pinkett, Vivica …
[6] Director Paul Verhoeven (Spetters, RoboCop) and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (Basic Instinct) reteam for this stripper-style twist on A Star is Born and All About Eve. Elizabeth Berkley (Saved by the Bell) stars as a tough but naïve young woman with Las Vegas showgirl aspirations. She quickly learns how devious the environment and its denizens can be. She learns their wicked game and plays it …
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