[7] A doctor visits a woman in an insane asylum to determine if she requires a lobotomy to forget the horror of seeing her cousin murdered, or if her aunt is pushing for the procedure to cover the truth. Tennessee Williams wrote the play, Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir) directed the film, and the three leads are played by …
[6] From a technical and artistic point of view, this may be the finest animated film ever made. But it’s also dull. I dislike how the three floating fat ladies (Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather) steal the show, while the prince and princess are given all the personality of tree stumps. Fortunately, artistry goes a long way. Sleeping Beauty is Disney’s most exquisite work. I love …
[8] François Truffaut made his feature directorial debut with this semi-autobiographical tale of a disenfranchised twelve-year-old Parisian boy who takes his first steps into a life of petty crime. Truffaut went into The 400 Blows with an admirable mission statement — to capture the very real malaise of pre-pubescence. Truffaut’s doppelganger is Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), whose escalating infractions with his school and parents threaten to …
[5] Vincent Price headlines as a millionairre who offers $10,000 to five people if they’ll spend the night with him and his wife in their haunted hilltop mansion. The house is the site of countless murders and is supposed to be haunted by ghosts. But is it the paranormal the guests should be afriad of? Or is it Price and his wife, who seem to …
[6] A bold film for its time, A Summer Place deals with sexual awakening and reawakening. Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue play the teenaged lovers; Richard Egan and Dorothy McGuire play the adulterous middle-aged ones. The first forty-five minutes of the story are pretty strong, but once the affairs are out in the open, the script struggles to find its focus. Highlights include a terrific …
[5] Paul Newman stars as a lawyer who rises to power through the manipulations of his mother and other socialites. He finally finds his own voice and something worth standing for when an old friend is put on trial for a murder he didn’t commit. Newman is always charismatic, but his character here lacks a strong internal mechanism to move the story forward (at least …
[4] Just six years after directing The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, director Eugene Lourie goes back to the well for another giant lizard movie, only this time the monster is radioactive. While production values are high for a low-budget British production (British B-movies put American B-movies to shame, really), the resulting film is a far less successful one. Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion animation in the last …
[4] Frank Sinatra stars as a US army captain in charge of helping Kachin natives in WWII Burma defend themselves against the Japanese. Never So Few divides its attention between the gun battles in the jungle and Sinatra’s makeout sessions with Italian beauty Gina Lollobrigida. As a result, it excels in neither area — I didn’t much care about the troops or the lady, and …
[5] Bizarre, lavish misfire featuring Audrey Hepburn as a jungle girl who falls in love with a political refugee played by Anthony Perkins. The movie’s beautiful in a kitschy kind of way, but the story is slow-moving and suffers from the lack of any strong characters. Perkins gives a incredibly awkward performance, overacting at times and barely registering at others. Hepburn probably does the best …
[10] An unshakable sheriff and his riff-raff crew brace for a days-long siege when a swarm of bad guys descend on their town, threatening to free one of their own from jail. Rio Bravo is the last great film from legendary director Howard Hawks (Scarface, Bringing Up Baby, The Big Sleep). It’s not the epic western you might imagine from Hollywood in the ’50s. Nor …
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