There were quite a few musicals made in the mid- to late-1960s but my favorite among them has to be the one with the longest title, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967). It’s more a comedy than […]
Continue reading »Category: Movies Worth Rediscovering
The Three Lives of Thomasina (1964) ☆ ☆ ☆
So-called “family films” are not often among my favorites but I’ve always been partial to this live-action Walt Disney adventure based on Paul Gallico’s popular story of a precocious ginger cat in the Scottish highlands, The Three Lives of Thomasina […]
Continue reading »Master of the World (1961) ☆ ☆ ☆
Two of Jules Verne’s novels, Clipper of the Clouds (aka Robur, the Conqueror) and Master of the World, are here combined by superlative screenwriter Richard Matheson into a heroic, if decidedly old-fashioned, screen adventure. Master of the World (1961) spotlights […]
Continue reading »Enemy Mine (1985) ☆ ☆ ☆
One of the most ambitious science-fiction films of the 1980s is Enemy Mine (1985), Wolfgang Petersen’s space odyssey of a personal battle between an Earthman (Dennis Quaid) and a lizard-like alien (Louis Gossett, Jr.) who, following a fierce space battle, […]
Continue reading »Hell in the Pacific (1968) ☆ ☆ ☆
Two-character dramas are fairly uncommon in cinema but they usually work well as long as the actors chosen are charismatic. For Hell in the Pacific (1968), director John Boorman could not have chosen more charismatic actors than Lee Marvin and […]
Continue reading »In the Good Old Summertime (1949) ☆ ☆ ☆
Charm is also evident in Robert Z. Leonard’s musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner, perversely titled In the Good Old Summertime (1949) even though the majority of the story takes place in December. The locale has been altered […]
Continue reading »The Shop Around the Corner (1940) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
Among Ernst Lubitsch’s most charming movies is the comedy-drama The Shop Around the Corner (1940). Its story of a man and a woman who fall in love through corre-spondence but actively dislike each other in person (they are unaware of […]
Continue reading »The Jackal (1997) ☆ ☆ ☆
Twenty-four years after The Day of the Jackal was released, Universal got its corporate wish and remade the story with howitzers of star power as The Jackal (1997). Thankfully, because the new film is based on the original’s screenplay, it’s […]
Continue reading »The Day of the Jackal (1973) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
One of the most suspenseful thrillers of the 1970s is this gem, a British-French co-production directed by Fred Zinnemann. The Day of the Jackal (1973) is an exciting adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s best-seller concerning an conspiracy plot to kill French […]
Continue reading »Manpower (1941) ☆ ☆ ☆
Four years after Slim, Warner Bros. remade the story, with some notable differences. The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther quite eruditely explained the studio’s process in this way: The Warner Brothers…know the pat way to forge a thunderbolt. […]
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