Login
Home
95 Lists
1531 Reviews
Collections
“Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva is all impeccably detailed frames, cool, smooth surfaces awash in bold colors like pinks and whites and wrapped up in moody lighting and scoring. The details of the plot are inconsequential and preposterous as they merely exist to serve the mood of the piece. Diva is no” read more
“What a fascinating and godawful curio this is. Can something with a banging soundtrack really be all that bad? In the answer, it would appear, is yeah, it can. Famous for being the first big screen role of Debra Winger, containing Donna Summer’s immortal “Last Dance” (which won the Best Song O” read more
“Of Busby Berkeley’s three 1933 Warner Brothers films, I would place Footlight Parade in the bronze slot with Gold Diggers of 1933 in the gold and 42nd Street in silver. I suppose a lot of the enjoyment one gets out of Footlight Parade is your ability to stomach the likes of Dick Powell and Ruby Ke” read more
“Not only had Jean Harlow learned to act by 1936’s Riffraff, but her hair wasn’t the aggressive platinum blonde of her ribald days. She was at the height of her beauty here, and in the middle of another change of screen persona. The softening of Harlow’s bad girl act was one of trying to find a” read more
“What a curio 1935’s Reckless is. Not just for the backstage dynamics involved in its making but the morbid bits of autobiography and uneasy tonal switches between screwball musical comedy and torrid melodrama. With the Pre-Code years behind them, MGM sought to turn Jean Harlow’s rounded figure i” read more
“Sidney Poitier’s third film as a director, Uptown Saturday Night, is a delightful, rowdy minor work. His work as a director is still a bit too stuffy and heavy-handed for what is essentially a situation comedy blown to feature-length, but it’s still enjoyable. He counterbalances this stiff direc” read more
“Much like 1965’s A Patch of Blue, 1973’s A Warm December finds Sidney Poitier as healing presence for a woman. The major difference is that A Warm December plays like a combination of Roman Holiday and Love Story, but with an all-black cast. Poitier is a widower who travels to London and meets C” read more
“Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut is a western that continually threatens to be more interesting than it is. The story concerns Buck (Poitier) leading a wagon train of newly freed slaves westward, Preacher (Harry Belafonte), a greedy ex-con posing as a man of the word, and Deshay (Cameron Mitchel” read more
“The 1967 Academy Awards is widely considered one of the turning points and a viable symbol of the movie industry in full-blown identity crisis. Even the Wikipedia page for the event states: “The Best Picture nominees were an eclectic group of films reflecting the chaos of the era.” You had the w” read more
“Based on a short story by Marvin H. Albert called “Apache Rising,” Duel at Diablo throws a lot of big ideas and big stars at the screen hoping something will stick. Not a lot does as it feels both overwhelmed and underthought. As beautiful as the backdrops are, as thrilling as the two major set ” read more
“Sidney Poitier’s transformation from individual performer to all-encompassing symbol of an entire race as the lone black star of prominence is evident by the mid-60s. His thankless role of therapist to an alt-right Bobby Darin in Pressure Point was a red flag of this happening, as was his great wo” read more
“A simple story that aims for emotional warmth and heart-tugging uplift, and succeeds, Lilies of the Field is a sweet little movie that charms. One of the Oscars earliest little movies that could, Sidney Poitier took points on the backend and director Ralph Nelson put his house up as collateral, this” read more
“Stanley Kramer, Hollywood’s original good liberal, may not have directed (most of) this film, but his fingerprints are all over it. From the histrionic treatment of socially important material to the presence of movie stars in subbing in for ideological arguments, Pressure Point has all the hallma” read more
“I must confess that this version of A Raisin in the Sun was the very first that I have watched, including stage shows and tv movies. I have known the basics of the plot – generational conflict, white flight, economic unease, striving for a better life for your family – but had never actually rea” read more
“I think the four credited writers it took to adapt Harold Flender’s 1957 novel are the biggest tell that something is going to be ‘off’ with the final product. Sure enough, this one has got to be a lesser, if not the least, entry in the collaboration between director Martin Ritt and star Paul ” read more
“James Baldwin famously derided this as white liberal wish fulfillment, and he wasn’t off the mark. Stanley Kramer’s cinema at its most essential elements is just that, well-intentioned if sanctimonious liberal guilt/fantasy. The Defiant Ones is another entry in that canon as it literalizes eleme” read more
“Nothing ages quite as quick as a mainstream Hollywood film about hot button social issues. Look no further than Blackboard Jungle, which reimagines an inner-city high school as a war zone of rapist students, gang violence, and a Molotov cocktail waiting to be thrown. Brute Force: Junior Edition, ess” read more
“Alan Paton adapted his own for the big screen and helped craft one of cinema’s first discussion about Apartheid in South Africa. Zoltan Korda creates a distinguished if heavily sentimental affair that has its heart in the right place. Movies about big, important social issues are often like this: ” read more
“Louis Malle’s camera fills his tableaus with all sorts of eccentric details in this sweet, modest romance about two desperate people looking for a lifeline. We have Burt Lancaster bringing his history of tough guys to an aging gangster romancing Susan Sarandon’s waitress with a shady past in a c” read more