[8] Franco Nero stars as a coffin-dragging vigilante who fights his way out between a gang of Mexican bandits and a militia of white supremacists in Django, one of the most famous of the spaghetti westerns. While director Sergio Corbucci certainly tries to emulate the style of Sergio Leone, Django is nonetheless a tight, well-paced, grittily entertaining piece of B-cinema. Franco Nero carries the movie …
[8] Spike Lee explores racism from multiple angles in Do the Right Thing, a provocative but entertaining ‘day in the life’ flick set in a Brooklyn community on the hottest day of the summer. Films that deal with racism tend to be either maudlin or one-sided, so I was glad to see Lee present the issue as the complicated one that it is. Scenes between …
[8] George Cukor directs from the play by Philip Barry (The Philadelphia Story), giving Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant a chance to shine in this screwball romance. There’s not a Hepburn/Grant pairing I don’t like, and this one comes with a great supporting performance by Lew Ayres as Hepburn’s sobriety-impaired brother. Grant plays a somewhat Bohemian man who falls in love with a rich socialite …
[8] After impulsively wishing her baby brother away, a teenaged girl must brave a dangerous labyrinth and rescue the tot from a nefarious Goblin King in Labyrinth, the product of a bizarre but winning combination of creative talents. Director Jim Henson reunites with Dark Crystal conceptual designer Brian Froud for a comic fantasy adventure scripted by Monty Python’s Terry Jones. The movie is further energized …
[8] Maggie Smith took home the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Jean Brodie, a charismatic school teacher who dedicates herself to a class of impressionable young women. The film may sound like an all-girl precursor to Dead Poets Society, but it’s a far more nuanced and provocative take on the ‘inspirational teacher’ story. Brodie may begin as the hero of the story, but …
[8] Pacific Rim is good, dumb summer fun. It’s beautiful, sexy, exciting, funny, and it kinda made me feel like a kid again. The premise involves Kaiju and Jägers… scratch that. Let’s call it like it is: this movie is about big fucking robots fighting big fucking monsters. The monsters come from another dimension, entering our world from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The robots, …
[8] I never particularly liked Westerns until I saw this film, my first ‘Spaghetti Western.’ Most people credit Sergio Leone for inventing the genre. If it weren’t for his so-called Man With No Name trilogy (three films starring Clint Eastwood, of which A Fistful of Dollars is the first) the sub-genre may have never taken flight. What Leone did was take the stagey, polished, over-produced …
[8] Leo McCarey won the best director Oscar for The Awful Truth, released the same year, but told the Academy they’d awarded him for the wrong picture. He may be right. Make Way for Tomorrow is a disarming, bonafide love story between an elderly couple (Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi) who are forced to separate when the bank forecloses on their home. The film is …
[8] It may have been Disney’s pallid attempt to cash in on the success of Star Wars, but The Black Hole is another kind of animal, a kitschy matinee sci-fi/horror movie that’s worth a look in its own right. It’s a cross between Frankenstein and The Old Dark House, falling more in line with Forbidden Planet than it does George Lucas’ famous trilogy. Robert Forster, …
[8] Three girls and a teacher mysteriously disappear during a 1900 school picnic at a strange rock formation in this Australian film from director Peter Weir (Witness, Master and Commander). Weir uses his trademark poetic license to suggest a supernatural cause, but don’t look for a firm answers — the film is based on a true story that was never solved.
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