A good car chase works for completely different reasons than its bipedal counterpart. Where a foot chase is more intimate, desperate, and rough, car chases are cool, exciting, almost romantic. Here the journey overwhelms destination: tough guys (and girls) driving sleek machines at impossible speeds. And unlike foot chases, there are no real limitations on …
Not to be confused with the 1971 classic The French Connection starring Gene Hackman, director Cedric Jimenez’s second feature The Connection essentially tells the European side of events of the infamous drug operation. Academy Award-winner Jean Dujardin leads a strong cast as Pierre Michel, a magistrate stationed in Marseille, determined to cut off the supply chain but unaware of how high up corruption from the local Corsican mob has spread up the political food chain.
In 1973, William Friedkin directed The Exorcist and frightened a generation, creating a horror movie classic. Three years earlier, before The French Connection launched Friedkin onto the A-list, he directed The Boys in the Band, an adaptation of an off-Broadway play about a group of gay men at a birthday party. The Boys in the …
There are all kinds of producers: hucksters, hustlers, con men and schlockmeisters. Some are in it for the glory, some like to walk the red carpet with a starlet on their arm. For some, the biggest award is a box office hit and it doesn’t matter what kind of crap they throw on the screen …
Oliver Reed as Athos in The Three Musketeers & The Four Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973/1974, UK): These films were actually shot all at once but ultimately released as two separate films telling one long story. As the musketeer with a dark past, Oliver Reed provides a lot of the heart and soul in these very …
If I may, I’d like to quote from Entertainment Weekly’s review of the just released 70th anniversary Blue-ray release of Casablanca (1942). According to Chris Nashawaty’s piece, when the script arrived at Warner Bros. in December of 1941 “…there wasn’t an ending yet…the movie was just one of 50 in Warner’s crowded pipeline at the …
As happened for so many other genres, the 1960s/1970s saw a tremendous creative expansion in crime and cop thrillers. The old Hollywood moguls had died off or retired, most of the major studios were bleeding red ink, attendance had gone off a cliff since the end of WW II, and a new breed of young, …
“When I was a child,” film reviewer Stephen Whitty wrote in “What Happened to Grown-Up Films?” for New Jersey’s state paper, The Star-Ledger, on the day of the Oscars, “most of the big hits in movie theaters were aimed at adults. Now that I’m an adult, most of the big hits in movie theaters are …
A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist. Louis Nizer In his indispensable film study text, Understanding Movies, Louis Gianetti held forth on …
At a time of the year that’s all about picking the best of the best among movies, it seems singularly appropriate to talk to someone whose year-round profession is assaying the good and the bad up on the big screen. “I’m one of the few people on the paper who’s never had a journalism class, …
Since the earliest days of American cinema there has been a shadowy counterpart to the commercial mainstream: exploitation movies — pictures whose appeal lies in their sensational treatment and leering promotion of often lurid and prurient material. Pre-1960, when mainstream Hollywood worked within severe restrictions on content, exploitation movies offered audiences titillating glimpses of the …
Authors note: Okay, let me just a minute to explain about my relationship with cop movies. I love them! As an ex-actor my ideal role would be that of some down on his luck, hardboiled cop! The very first feature length script I completed was a cop thriller! I did my very best at channeling …