The Goddess with Kim Stanley. Paddy Chayefsky evokes a cynical Tennessee Williams in his screenplay for The Goddess, a Hollywood cautionary tale directed by veteran John Cromwell. Episodic in progression…
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Super 8½ (1994) movie review: Underground Bruce La Bruce feature is a subversive, self-indulgently chaotic Citizen Kane + Fellini + gay explicit sex mélange.
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Hollow Reed, the tale of a little boy loved by his gay father and abused by his heterosexual stepfather, was the winner of the Audience Award at the 1996 Dinard…
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Hold Back the Dawn (1941) movie review: Mitchell Leisen’s romantic melodrama is a solid Olivia de Havilland showcase. Charles Boyer and Paulette Goddard costar.
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‘The Marines Are Coming’: Gay star’s final movie The Marines Are Coming was a last-minute substitution for the 1936 version of M’Liss, starring Anne Shirley, which was originally scheduled but…
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Crips and Bloods: Made in America. In the 1980s and into the first half of the 1990s, gang violence in American urban centers grabbed nightly news headlines with a distant…
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Boris Karloff & Bela Lugosi horror classics “With a few exceptions,” wrote Andrew Sarris in You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet, “The Bride of Frankenstein represented the last gasp of the…
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Noah’s Ark with George O’Brien, Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams, and Paul McAllister. Of all the films from that magical moment when silent movies merged into sound, nothing is as effective…
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The Tiger’s Tail with Brendan Gleeson and Kim Cattrall. One might initially be surprised to find that John Boorman’s latest film, The Tiger’s Tail, has all but gone straight to…
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Sitting Pretty with Clifton Webb. In the late 1940s, the bucolic suburb of Hummingbird Hill is shaken in its tranquil complacency by the scandalous actions of two middle-aged, unmarried men. Each of…
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The Masseurs and a Woman. The usual 1930s Japanese film preoccupations with societal roles are explored in writer-director Hiroshi Shimizu’s moving Anma to onna / The Masseurs and a Woman…
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Evan Rachel Wood, Henry Cavill, and director Woody Allen. Woody Allen’s return to NYC has resulted in one of his best comedies in years. Of course, he hasn’t been making…
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Vilma Banky. Edward G. Robinson was only 37 years old when he gave this hammy, scene-stealing, over-the-top performance as Tony, a middle-aged Italian grape grower in Napa Valley, California, in…
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Lady Windermere’s Fan with Irene Rich. Bert Lytell is the nice husband, May McAvoy the jealous wife, Ronald Colman the other man, and Irene Rich the scene stealer in Ernst…
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Tokyo Sonata (2008) movie review: Kiyoshi Kurosawa exposes the unraveling of Japan’s traditional social fabric in this capably acted urban drama.
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Synopsis: West Texas, 1980: A hunter (Josh Brolin) stumbles upon numerous dead bodies, a stash of heroin, and $2 million in cash lying about in the region’s arid wasteland near…
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Tess of the Storm Country with Mary Pickford and Harold Lockwood. Directed by Edwin S. Porter (of The Great Train Robbery fame), the 1914 version of Tess of the Storm…
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Possessed with Joan Crawford and Van Heflin. From the moment we see her shuffling across town in a comatose stupor to the homicidal climax, Possessed is Joan Crawford’s picture all…
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From the moment The Gang’s All Here opens with a nightclub production number presented on a stage as big as a football field, Busby Berkeley’s fast-paced Technicolor musical delivers the…
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Casablanca (1942) movie review: Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman star in Michael Curtiz’s romance classic. But is it truly great cinema?
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Griffith Movies: Mandatory Viewing + Excellent Carol Dempster and the American Kay Hammond while Orson Welles remembers W.C. Fields.
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Griffith Cinema: Abraham Lincoln Biopic and the dangers of alcoholism + climactic ice-floe river rescue honoring father of American film.
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Young People Fucking / YPF (2007) movie review: Martin Gero’s true-to-life sex romantic comedy-drama is funny, provocative and at times surprising.
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The Wild Women of Wongo (1958) movie review: You’ll enjoy it if you focus on what truly matters: Beautiful physiques and the overall weirdness.
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Cinecon attractions included the Charles Chaplin and Marie Dressler vehicle Tillie’s Punctured Romance, known as cinema’s first comedy feature.
To Each His Own (1946) movie review: Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland creates a shrewd portrayal in Mitchell Leisen’s heartfelt melodrama.
Michiyo Aratama, Tatsuya Nakadai in The Human Condition Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition, based on Jumpei Gomikawa’s novel, is probably as well known for its scope and scale as for…
The Killing Kind with Ann Sothern and John Savage. When I read that The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film described Curtis Harrington’s The Killing Kind as “a seldom-seen sickie” I just…
American Swing: Larry Levenson and Mary. By way of interviews, photos, and home movies, Mathew Kaufman and journalist Jon Hart’s American Swing humorously chronicles the rise and fall of all-American…
Sold for Marriage: Remarkably modern early silent film Though all but completely forgotten today, Christy Cabanne (at times billed as William Christy Cabanne) was a respected name in the 1910s…
Blade Runner (1982) movie review: Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford’s dystopian sci-fi thriller is a modern classic. But does it merit that label?
Let the Right One In (2008) movie review: Tomas Alfredson creates a refreshing blend of character study, budding romance and supernatural horror.