[6] Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone move their family from the hustle and bustle of the big city to an old mansion in the middle of rural nowhere. But before they’re settled in, a strange and spooky man (Stephen Dorff) comes knocking. As a series of unfortunate events unfold, the family discover the man has a connection to the property and he’s not about to …
[6] Director Lasse Hallström (The Shipping News, Chocolat) serves up a fluffy, romantic, period piece comedy centered around the antics of legendary lover Casanova in Venice. Heath Ledger plays the promiscuous hero, who early in the film receives a mandate from the ruler of Venice to get married or leave Venice forever. So Casanova goes in search of a wife, beginning a second act rife with mistaken …
[7] Marlene Dietrich re-teams with director Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel) to play a woman-on-the-run in Blonde Venus. After her husband falls ill from radium poisoning, Dietrich performs in a nightclub to make money for his treatment. But when Cary Grant shows up at the club offering a way to make more money faster, Dietrich takes him up on his offer. (Who wouldn’t prostitute …
[7] Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, and Ian McShane star in this stylish and darkly comic story about a retired safecracker (Winstone) whose former mentor (Kingsley) shows up demanding that they team up for one more hit. Kingsley steals the show here in a role that earned him an Oscar nomination. His character is manic, alternating between threatening calm and almost laughable violent energy. Since I …
[7] Broderick Crawford plays a small-town hick who attracts a populist following that takes him all the way to the governor’s mansion, even though his ascent is riddled with corruption and crime. All the King’s Men is really about Crawford’s support team and how they weather his immorality. John Ireland and Mercedes McCambridge play the two key supporters. They begin the film bright-eyed and full …
[6] Melissa McCarthy shifts gears with a dramatic turn in Can You Ever Forgive Me?, the true story of celebrity biographer Lee Israel, who after decades of success writing best-selling books about the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Estee Lauder, and Tallulah Bankhead, found herself in a desperate dry spell in the early ’90s. She turned to forgery to make ends meet, selling fake private letters …
[6] Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood, Louise Fletcher, and Cliff Robertson star as scientists who discover how to record and transmit memories and sensory experiences from one person to another, a direct transference from brain to brain. When their technology is given over to the military, they work to sabotage their creation before it can be put to deadly use. Brainstorm is directed by visual effects …
[7] Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, Killing of a Sacred Deer) brings his off-kilter humor to this dark period-piece comedy about a poor but clever scullery maid (Emma Stone) who ingratiates herself to England’s ailing Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) with intentions of replacing the Queen’s longtime confidante and political proxy (Rachel Weisz). You can think of it as a quirky retelling of All About Eve. The …
[6] Rory Calhoun, or proto-George Clooney as I like to call him, stars in this kinda silly but kinda fun sword-and-sandals flick that earned Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars, Once Upon a Time in America) his first major directing credit. Calhoun plays a visiting war hero on the island of Rhodes who gets tangled in a rebel uprising and a Phoenician conquest. He also …
[6] Devil and the Deep stars Tallulah Bankhead as the wife of a U.S. naval commander played by Charles Laughton (receiving ‘introducing’ credit here). Laughton’s character is mentally ill and insanely jealous of every man Bankhead ever comes into contact with, which includes Cary Grant early on in the film, and later with Gary Cooper. Thing is, Tallulah really did sleep with Cooper (God bless …
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