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Birdman of Alcatraz

“The cinema is filled with collaborations between directors and their handsome proxies reuniting and exploring, if not refining, their individual and collective images. Behold the collaboration between director John Frankenheimer, one of cinema’s most sensitively masculine directors, and star Burt ” read more

Sorry, Wrong Number

“Anatole Litvak finally does something with his camera besides plop it down and film his actors as though they were performing on a stage. He pushes it into star Barbara Stanwyck’s face so we can count every drop of sweat that forms across her brow and upper lip while she lies in bed and franticall” read more

Brute Force

“Iron-jawed Burt Lancaster plays a tortured prisoner aching to get out to reunite with his ailing wife (Ann Blyth). We understand and sympathize with him, but not just with him but all the men in his cell block. When they riot against the despotic guard (Hume Cronyn), we understand their motivating f” read more

I Walk Alone

“Film noir is dependent upon a palpable sense of atmosphere, of a world going to rot, covered in grim and thick with smoke. There’s a sense of erotic energy and danger, often intertwined, and everyone seems morally pliable, if not bankrupt or seeking salvation. What separates the best from the mere” read more

The Rainmaker

“If you had a story set during the Great Depression in a sleepy, dusty little town suitable for the conning by a charlatan and the spinster daughter ripe for a sexual awakening by the same, who would you cast in those roles? Well, if we’re talking about the studio era of films, then the answers wou” read more

The Court Jester

“If there’s any completely realized and executed masterpiece in Danny Kaye’s filmography it is 1956’s The Court Jester. Not only is it a goof on the Errol Flynn medieval swashbucklers but it maintains a perfect balance of the songs, narrative, comedic bits, and characters to build something spe” read more

A Song Is Born

“A musical-comedy remake of Ball of Fire from Howard Hawks, A Song Is Born is a film that I probably enjoyed more than the average viewer. By no stretch of the imagination is it an improvement on the original, or even a worthy successor, but it is harmlessly entertaining. And it is fascinating to wat” read more

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

“Here is the film where Danny Kaye’s career begins to transition away from near shapeless excuses for his typical bag of tricks and towards something that gives him more character and structure. While The Secret Life of Walter Mitty still finds plenty of time, a bit too much in my estimation, to hi” read more

The Kid from Brooklyn

“The Kid from Brooklyn casts Danny Kaye as a meek milkman who somehow becomes a boxer. That’s it, that’s the entire premise of this one. Many of the usual parts are here again, Vera-Ellen, Virginia Mayo, the Goldwyn Girls, songs and dances, bits of slapstick comedy. It’s pure Kaye formula by th” read more

Wonder Man

“Danny Kaye pulls double-duty in Wonder Man playing twins, one a nebbish type and the other a nightclub sensation that runs afoul of some gangsters. The ghost of the extrovert possesses the nerd and causes all sorts of shenanigans along the way. Of course, there’s a love triangle adject plotline in” read more

Up in Arms

“Danny Kaye’s film debut, Up in Arms, is a case study in his (now stale) musical-comedies of the mid-40s. There’s a very basic premise and structure, hypochondriac gets drafted into the army, that merely exists as an excuse to get Kaye to perform various bits of song-and-dance, pull faces, and co” read more

Ferdinando and Carolina

“Lina Wertmüller returns to her oldest obsessions – sexuality and politics and where/how they converge – in Ferdinando and Carolina. Yet Wertmüller’s film is malformed and various maneuvers are poorly explained to the audience so the narrative remains indecipherable. It’s quite simple, Ferd” read more

Summer Night

“Summer Night plays like a spiritual sequel to Swept Away in which the couple get something akin to a happy ending, or as happy an ending as Lina Wertmüller is capable of crafting, which is more elliptical than emphatic. A wealthy industrialist (Mariangela Melato) kidnaps a Sicilian renegade (Michel” read more

Swept Away

“A make-or-break film or the make-or-break film for whether the cinema of Lina Wertmüller is for you? Swept Away is a combination of her rebellious treatment of sexual politics, class politics, and regional differences populated with her two favorite actors, Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato.” read more

All Screwed Up

“Coming off her first masterpiece, Love & Anarchy, Lina Wertmüller dropped the stars and more playful tone for this scattershot glimpse on modern living in Milan viewed through the prism of recently arrived citizens of southern Italy. The film is essentially an assembly of various pieces struggl” read more

The Seduction of Mimi

“A perfect sampler for the cinema of Lina Wertmüller, one of Italian cinema’s biggest provocateurs. The Seduction of Mimi not only unites the director with her two best stars, Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato, but offers an accessible primer on her artistic outlook and prevailing themes. W” read more

A Separation

“From the opening minutes of A Separation we are thrown into the deep end of the film’s emotionally bruising and complicated morass. The simplest of domestic squabbles can so easily spin out into messy situations that grow exponentially and drag in surrounding players. What starts as a simple impas” read more

Get Carter

“Am I missing something with Get Carter? Widely acclaimed as one of the preeminent British gangster films, if not films in general, but I just couldn’t embrace it. For all its grit, grime, and fetishistic sexuality, there’s a sleaziness and pronounced periods of lag.   Granted, having Michael” read more

Alfie

“A corrosive portrait of a misogynist getting his comeuppance, Alfie is a minor late-60s work anchored by a wonderful Michael Caine performance. Caine gives a layered, complex performance that finds Alfie’s toxic masculinity, unwarranted arrogance, and gross sexism smothering a deep insecurity and ” read more

Charlotte’s Web

“Hanna-Barbera aren’t a studio that’s necessarily known for its high production values. Many of its beloved franchises, and I do love several of them, aren’t exactly memorable (in a positive way) for their beautiful animation. Plenty of chatter has occurred referencing the repeating backgrounds” read more

A Wrinkle in Time

“Ava DuVernay’s camera is one that is best when the scales are smaller, and she can obsess over the contours and textures of an actor’s face. Not only the stellar adult players in this ensemble, but Storm Reid and Deric McCabe’s surprising and pleasing central performances. It’s a shame that ” read more

Gold Diggers of 1933

“The Depression looms large over the lives of these showgirls – skipping the rent, desperate for employment, putting things in hock. And what a fun group of girls it is between Aline MacMahon’s acid tongue, Joan Blondell’s raw intensity, and a pre-supernova Ginger Rogers playing one of her good” read more

Oliver!

“Quick – what did Sir Carol Reed win his Oscar for? If you answered The Third Man, The Fallen Idol, or any of his acknowledged masterpieces you’d be wrong. In fact, Reed didn’t win his Oscar until late in his career during the height of the Academy’s obsession with two different things: music” read more

Clash of the Titans

“The original Clash of the Titans is no cinematic masterpiece, but it is an enjoyable matinee-styled romp through Greek mythology replete with some of the greatest creations of Ray Harryhausen’s estimable career. This remake turns everything up to eleven as a starting point and seems rolled off the” read more

Æon Flux

“While out promoting Atomic Blonde in 2017, Charlize Theron mentioned Æon Flux and her ultimate disappointment with the movie. She remarked that while she never had complete faith in the project, she wanted to trust in director Karyn Kusama but acknowledged that they “fucked it all up” because t” read more

Men in Black

“A six-issue independent comic book baked in hyperviolence about a group of (largely Aryan) secretive agents that use any means necessary to hide the existence of the supernatural from the public at large gets remade into a popcorn entertainment that’s a lively buddy cop movie. If that sounds like ” read more

Logan’s Run

“Ever watch something that was so clearly kitsch try to take itself too seriously? If not, then behold Logan’s Run, another adaptation of a grim novel that jettisons everything but the most skeletal basics. There’s a compelling idea there but it’s buried under poor acting (from normally solid a” read more

Shivers

“The human anatomy, both from horror and sexual perspectives, and a major distrust of technology and societal permissiveness runs throughout David Cronenberg’s body of work. 1975’s Shivers was Cronenberg’s first feature-length film, and a preview of his oeuvre. Following the, uh, we’ll call t” read more

A Boy and His Dog

“A cult dystopian vision that takes the “boy and his dog” and wraps it up in black humor and crotch-minded salaciousness. I’m not sure if I enjoyed it, hated it, found it charming, or more quixotic in my estimation, but I know A Boy and His Dog is unlike anything else I’ve seen. Don Johnson i” read more

Death Race 2000

“If Rollerball is the intellectual vision of “blood sport as opiate for the masses,” then Death Race 2000 is the loopy grindhouse inversion of it. Not directed by Roger Corman but shepherded by him, Death Race 2000 is a vision of American life at its most nihilistic. Whatever political framework ” read more