Rebecca is an ageless, timeless adult movie about a woman who marries a widower but fears she lives in the shadow of her predecessor. This was Hitchcock’s first American feature, and it garnered the Best Picture statue at the 1941 Academy Awards. In today’s films, most twists and surprises are ridiculous or just gratuitous, so [...]
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz live slaphappily ever with as newlyweds honeymooning in The Long, Long Trailer, flippantly directed by Vincente Minnelli. They quickly find that the interior of a moving trailer is ideal for tossing a Caesar salad – and everything else. That backing up their 40-foot, three-ton home is only a small more [...]
This brilliant (The New Republic) film sets the ageless tale of Romeo and Juliet against a backdrop of gang warfare in 1950s New York. Directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins and scripted by Ernest Lehman, the film combines Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s unforgettable score ( Maria, America, ‘somewhere, ‘tonight ) with Robbins own [...]
The year is 1999, and all of Earth’s monsters have been captured and detained at Ogasawara Island. All is well in the solar system until one day, a race of alien women brainwashes the monsters and releases them, causing havoc nearly the world. Godzilla attacks New York City, Rodan invades Moscow, Mothra lays waste to [...]
FATHER GOOSE – DVD MovieCary Accord’s penultimate feature before retirement was this cheerful 1964 effort to overturn his career-long image of urbane sophistication. As the unshaven, messy misanthrope Walter Eckland, a World War II-era beach bum who monitors Japanese air activity for the Australian navy in exchange for booze, Accord makes a convincingly hard-bitten, hard-drinking [...]
In this poetic and atmospheric horror fable, set in a village in war-torn medieval Japan, a malevolent spirit has been ripping out the throats of itinerant samurai. When a military hero is sent to dispatch the unseen break down, he finds that he must struggle with his own personal demons as well. From Kaneto Shindo, [...]
