Pioneers of African-American Cinema (Kino, Blu-ray, DVD) – The legacy of African-American filmmaking—specifically films made by and for African-American audiences before Hollywood integrated its casts and gave leading roles to African-American actors—is largely unknown to even passionate films buffs, in part because the films were rarely seen by white audiences in their day, and in […]
Destiny (1921) is the first genuine masterpiece from Fritz Lang, one of the most influential filmmakers of the silent era and one of the great directors of all time. Even Lang thought so, and seeing the new restoration by the Murnau Siftung Foundation in Germany merely confirms that critical consensus. Technique, sensibility, cinematic vision, and […]
Don Siegel’s low-budget 1958 adventure The Gun Runners is not exactly a remake of To Have and Have Not but it is the third screen adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel. Audie Murphy takes the lead here as independent skipper Sam Martin, who rents his cabin cruiser to tourists looking to fish the waters of […]
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967) gave Roger Corman, the director-producer who earned the nickname “King of the Bs,” the biggest budget of his career to date. After more than 40 films, most of them for the budget-challenged AIP, he was hired by 20th Century Fox and given the resources of their studio, casting department, […]
Safety Last (1923) is the most famous of Harold Lloyd’s silent comedies and first of his “thrill pictures,” films that he built around slapstick ingenuity in the midst of daredevil stunts. This one has a doozy: Lloyd scales an office building in downtown Los Angeles, fumbling and fighting with obstacles the entire way. The image […]
Wicked is the operative term in The Wicked Lady (1945), an outsized, overwrought, gleefully excessive Gothic-pulp melodrama and the famous and most successful film made by the British studio Gainsborough. Margaret Lockwood takes title billing as the dark-hearted friend to the very model of generosity (played by Patricia Roc) and she begins the film by […]
Hombre (1967), adapted from the novel by Elmore Leonard, plays as a ruthless, revisionist take on Stagecoach. Paul Newman is the blue eyed “savage,” a white man raised by the Indians who rejects so-called civilized society for his spiritual family, who has chosen to go native rather than live in the lies and corruption of […]
A decade before he directed Dirty Harry and The Shootist, Don Siegel brought his tough world view and crisp, no-nonsense direction to Hell is for Heroes (1962), a quintessential World War II drama of an undermanned American platoon in France holding off a German advance through sheer bluff and bravery. Steve McQueen is curt and […]
The High and the Mighty was the biggest hit of 1954 and nominated for six Academy Awards (it won for Dmitri Tiomkin’s memorable score). Seen today, this lavish aviation drama falls squarely between Stagecoach and Airport, a large ensemble drama about a mechanical crisis on a Honolulu-to-San Francisco flight where every passenger has a story […]
Orson Welles’ 1952 masterpiece Othello, his shoestring-budgeted adaptation of the Shakespeare tragedy, is an example of creative will overcoming physical liability. Using primitive (by Hollywood standards) equipment and a rotating crew, and interrupting his shoot to raise money, Welles shot in spurts over three years all over Italy and Morocco and matched images shot in […]
