A film that starts with a romantic overture and a bit of slapstick comedy involving a terrier chasing a squirrel doesn’t exactly announce itself as an entrant in the horror genre. But then again“The Uninvited” (1944) combines quite a few…
Escape aboard your rickety ship from the Island of Lost Souls. Go on, sail right into the storm, what can be worse? By the time your ship wrecks, you’ve blown so far of course you stumble ashore in an unknown…
Here’s hoping Hollywood never gets around to remaking “I Married A Witch” (1942). The rumored Tom Cruise project(with Danny DeVito directing) from ten years ago might merely have been a disposable nuisance; today it would be marketed as a CGI…
Dennis Hopper’s first leading role isn’t exactly an early template for his intermittently volcanic career. As Johnny Drake, Hopper plays a soft-spoken sailor who is so shy and tentative he clutches his hands at his waist and shuffles in place…
After the box-office failure of “The Magnificent Ambersons” and a bitter fight with RKO over the allegedly out-of-control production of “It’s All True,” Orson Welles’s wunderkind status was in jeopardy along with his career behind the camera. But when directorial…
“It’s not whether you cry, it’s whether the audience thinks you’re crying.” – Ingrid Bergman Scribbled among my viewing notes while watching this boxed set is the line: “Bergman is not the most convincing crier.” When called on to cry…
The main review was written by Christopher Long for Criterion’s 2004 SD release of “Slacker.” The Video, Audio, Extras, and Film Value sections address the 2013 Blu-ray re-issue by Criterion. “I may live badly, but at least I don’t have…
Ingmar Bergman didn’t exactly believe in the healing potential of catharsis. The mother-daughter confrontation that powers “Autumn Sonata” (1978) begins as a cordial, if strained, greeting. Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman) is a famous concert pianist who visits her daughter Eva (Liv…
By the early 1960s, the spy movie had begun to supplant the Western as America’s genre of choice, a transformation prompted largely by the staggeringly successful screen debut of James Bond in “Dr. No” (1962), followed in short order by…
The main review below was written by John Puccio in regards to the 2001 DVD release of “La Cage Aux Folles” by MGM The rest of the review was written by Christopher Long and addresses the 2013 Blu-ray release by…