Compulsion

“The true crime story of Leopold and Loeb is something that continues to entrance audiences with its layers of complicated motivations and deviant behavior, add in a dash of homosexuality and Nietzschian ideology and the whole thing practically comes gift wrapped with tabloid glamour. The best known ” read more

Panama Hattie

“This one feels like a second-tier throwaway from MGM’s infamous Arthur Freed unit. Panama Hattie is only as good and entertaining as any individual scene in the movie, and some of it is truly uninspired or downright dumb. I’m thinking of just about any of the scenes with a precocious Jackie Horn” read more

The Towering Inferno

“The all-star disaster epics of the 1970s were a strange little time capsule, as if the ethical quagmires and pervasive paranoia of the era could only be expressed in blockbusters that trapped a bunch of people in an isolated spot and made sure to shockingly kill off several of the big names every so” read more

Angel, Angel, Down We Go

“Angel, Angel, Down We Go, also known as Cult of the Damned, is a doozy of a head trip. I can’t even describe the plot, and won’t even try since none of it makes any sense and none of it feels consequential, but I can say it’s worth a glance. Don’t let my low star rating fool you, this isn’” read more

The Idol

“After four years away from the screen, and the first work post-David O. Selznick’s passing, Jennifer Jones makes for a curious figure. She seems ill-suited to the role here, and vaguely embarrassed by the things asked of her in the part. There’s nothing about her performance that is as flagrantl” read more

Tender is the Night

“The interior writing style of F. Scott Fitzgerald is practically impossible to adapt to film. It takes work for us to invest and understand the interior life of these characters, and this adaptation fails to do that. Many of these characters are not as sharply observed as they are in his novel, and ” read more

A Farewell to Arms

“This left me like Elaine in the Seinfeld episode where she’s forced to watch The English Patient, just staring at the screen and seething, “No, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. It’s too long….Just die already! DIE!” Looking at the critical reception of the day and the more recently, I” read more

The Barretts of Wimpole Street

“A remake of the 1934 version with the same director (who allegedly shot the exact same script) leading the charge, this version of The Barretts of Wimpole Street is a dull bit of coloring by the numbers. Director Sidney Franklin feels like he’s on autopilot, and so does much of the resulting drama” read more