THERE'S A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG WOMAN IN JULIAN KESTREL'S BED. UNFORTUNATELY, SHE'S DEAD.
Add the unflappable Julian Kestrel to the ranks of great sleuths of ages past. He's the very model of a proper Beau Brummell — except for his unusual willingness to plunge headlong into murder investigations. And an investigation's hard to avoid when, during an elegant weekend at a friend's country estate, a murder victim turns up in his bed. With the help of his Cockney manservant, Dipper, Kestrel sets out to find the killer among the glittering denizens of 1820s London's social stratosphere.
On the upside, "The Forbidden Kingdom" is brisk and colorfully realized, with excellent contribs not only from Pau's handsome widescreen lensing and the impressive Mainland sites deployed but also from Bill Brzeski's splendid production design and Shirley Chan's costumes.
a four-part, totally immersive, altogether operatic experience that defies traditional expectations in its abandonment of the common narrative form, in essence returning cinema to its roots of pure audio/visual augmentation.
But "2001" is not a cinematic landmark. It compares with, but does not best, previous efforts at science fiction; lacking the humanity of "Forbidden Planet," the imagination of "Things to Come" and the simplicity of "Of Stars and Men," it actually belongs to the technically-slick group previously dominated by George Pal and the Japanese.
This is a must-have for any serious collector of Japanese animation. Simply put, this anime is one of the best.
"Unforgiven" is a classic Western for the ages. In his 10th excursion into the genre that made him a star more than 25 years ago, Clint Eastwood has crafted a tense, hard-edged, superbly dramatic yarn that is also an exceedingly intelligent meditation on the West, its myths and its heroes.
Kinky Friedman is a Jewish Texan country-and-western singer turned Greenwich Village amateur detective, with a collection of smelly cigars, a cat, and two former -but simultaneous- girlfriends named Judy. Shortly after the possibly suspicious death of one of his closest friends, Kinky finds himself short one Judy, as Uptown Judy vanishes under mysterious circumstances. Before long, the death and the disappearance seem to be connected, along with Elvis impersonators, a missing documentary film, and a five-year-old mob murder. It'll take the Kinkster, with an assist from the Village Irregulars and Downtown Judy, to wrap this case like a New York Tex-Mex, decidedly nonkosher burrito.
How Awful About Allan is technically quite well-made— especially for a TV movie— and both Anthony Perkins and Julie Harris give highly effective performances, but none of that can prevent the film from feeling like it’s misplaced its point somewhere.
''Perfect Blue'' eventually turns into a very interesting play on levels and perceptions of reality. Before that, it includes profanity, stabbing, strangling, hitting, lots of animated blood and some animated nudity. With smarter dialogue, it might have made a fascinating film.
Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are cutting us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?
...
Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre or Kent State massacre, occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. Four students were killed and nine others wounded. The students were protesting the American invasion of Cambodia which President Richard Nixon launched on April 25, and announced in a television address five days later.
Chaos prevailed over the fifteen planes of reality. The old races had decayed. Only Prince Corum had been able to strike a blow for the forces of Light. And time had come for Corum to confront his fate - for the King of Swords, Mabelrode the Faceless, was prepared to wreak his vengeance on the wielder of the sword that slew his queen...
This is, in fact, an ably managed historical work up to the time when it begins to bludgeon the moral and to drag in a foolish little romance between the ex-gladiator's adopted son and one of the slaves whom he is bent on rescuing from the arena.
is considerably less than the collection of talents involved. The story is dull, the dialogue wooden and the characters one-dimensional. The moralizing tritely retreads the subject of the superman that everyone since Nietzsche has worn thin.
The rest of the movie is so good, though, that I’m willing to put up with the wobbly ending, and besides, it’s kind of cool to see so many familiar faces from the early to mid-50’s showing up here in the waning days of their careers.
What Bobby Fischer took away, dashing the hopes and the innocence of his acolytes when he spurned chess, may never truly be recaptured. But some of it has found its way to the screen.
You might not think "The Thief of Baghdad" could be so completely hacked that this fixture of fantasy fiction would come out a dull and ponderous film. Well, you haven't estimated the genius of the hacks of producer Joseph E. Levine, whose Italian-made version of the classic arrived in neighborhood theatres yesterday.
The problem with the film is that, despite the lavishness afforded to it, it befalls director Arthur Lubin. Arthur Lubin was primarily a comedy director who had made a number of Abbott and Costello films, as well as directed the entire Francis the Talking Mule series
...
Arthur Lubin has a thoroughly workmanlike pedestrianness of approach and resolutely refuses to allow the fantasy in the film here to fly in any way.
I enjoyed it just as much on viewing it now as I did as a kid. ... this film is a solid genre piece filled with pleasures I was happy to experience again.Time Out closes with this: "Pretty ordinary (not to say ludicrous), but some inventive and brutal underwater sequences." DVD Talk says, "All the cliches and more are present" but notes Bava's work: "The film has good photography and some impressive matte work by Bava".
Let it be said at once that the new Laurel and Hardy enterprise has achieved feature length without benefit of the usual distressing formulae of padding and stretching. It is funny all the way through.
THX 1138 was a superior product of its day, and it's too bad that we can't see it any more. In its place, George Lucas has given us his revised version, adding visuals and augmenting scenes..
The realm of Chaos was cast into disorder, for the Vadhagh Prince Corum -last of his ancient race- had slain the Knight of Swords. Thus the dreaded Queen turned upon Corum, and Mankind began its bloody march across the Earth. All that was gracious and beautiful stood in peril. And so Corum set out upon his fateful odyssey...
Alfred Hitchcock’s faithful screen adaptation of Frederick Knott’s hugely successful stage play Dial M for Murder is one of the director’s most confined works - virtually all of the story takes place in just one set – yet it is also one of his most compelling thrillers, and a practically flawless piece of direction.
Shadow Of A Doubt slanders that most cherished of American landscapes, the small town. That such a thorough critique of American mores appeared during World War II, a time when other directors were enshrining rather than embalming these standards, seems nothing short of incredible.
Probably the best of the Selznick Hitchcocks, and still the most dramatically satisfying, Notorious is a fascinating film. Besides being a superior romance, it's a model of suspense construction.
Anna-Liisa is a farmer's daughter, about to marry Johannes, who comes to visit her at the farm. The god-fearing family is happy for her, but Anna-Liisa has a dark secret, which is revealed in flashbacks. We are moved to a lake where Mikko, the former farm-hand, is working as a log-floater. He remembers when he met Anna-Liisa at a dance. They row home in the moonshine, the girl is seduced beneath a birch tree by the shore - while the rowing-boat drifts away. She gets pregnant, Mikko runs away and she kills the child. Mikko's mother helps her to clear the traces. Now the farm-hand's mother has a hold on the farmer's daughter, and when she hears about the marriage with Johannes three years later, she threatens the girl. Mikko comes home and wants to marry Anna-Liisa. She tells her relatives everything. When she tries to drown herself, Johannes saves her. She finds salvation. When the wedding is announced, Anna-Liisa declares that she has deciced to serve her penalty. End.
The Music Box was considered by Stan Laurel to be the best short he and Oliver Hardy created.... This three-reeler ranks with some of the best short works of silent screen comedians Charles Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton.
Almighty God, who hast given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life; Give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that his inestimable benefit, and also daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer)
1. Blade Runner
2. Gattaca
3. The Matrix
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey
5. Brazil
6. A Clockwork Orange
7. Alien
8. The Boys From Brazil
9. Jurassic Park
10. Star Wars
11. The Road Warrior
12. Tron
13. The Terminator
14. Sleeper
15. Soylent Green
16. RoboCop
17. Planet Of The Apes
18. The Day The Earth Stood Still
19. Akira
20. Barbarella
1. Star Wars
2. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
3. Back To The Future
4. Children Of Men
5. Star Trek 2 : The Wrath Of Khan
6. E.T. the Extra- Terrestrial
7. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars
City of Lost Children
Lilo and Stitch
Wrath of Khan
War of the Worlds
Pitch Black
The 5th Element
The Day the Earth Stood Still (original version)
Metropolis (silent)
The Andromeda Strain
When Worlds Collide
Star Wars
Marooned
Frankenstein
But it is not the technical excellence of the film which remains in one's mind. It is the puncturing of pomposity, the rejection of dehumanizing technical processes, the statement of essential human values and an appreciation of the incongruities of human existence.
À nous la liberté is a landmark in the history of film comedy because it's funny, yet it is too satirical for farce, too farcical for satire. And it is a landmark in the history of sound film.
À nous la liberté was one of the early triumphs of sound cinema and has retained its status as one of the all-time greats of French cinema.
it is done with such rare feeling and skill at pictorial imagery, and with such sympathetic understanding of Indian character on the part of Mr. Ray, that it develops a sort of hypnotism for the serene and tolerant viewer who is willing to sit still for an hour and forty-eight minutes and let some stunning black-and-white pictures pass before his eyes.
...
And Mr. Ray's remarkable camera catches beauty in so many things, from the softness of a mother's sad expression to the silhouette of a distant train, that innuendos take up the slack of drama. Hindu music and expressive natural sounds complete the stimulation of the senses in this strange, sad, evocative film.
Ray makes us re-evaluate the commonplace. He has the remarkable capacity of transforming the utterly mundane into the excitement of an adventure. There is the ability to recognise the mythic in the ordinary,
...
More then any of his contemporaries in world cinema, he can create an awareness of the ordinary man, and he doesn't do it in the abstract, but by using the simplest, most common and concrete details such as a gesture or a glance.
What is also distinctive in Ray's work is that the rhythm in his films seems almost meditative. There is a contemplative quality in the magnificent flow of images and sounds that evokes an attitude of acceptance and detachment, which is profoundly Indian.
had a profound effect on filmmaking within India and an important effect on the attention paid to Indian films outside India
Children of Men is a strong and intelligent venture into the dystopian future theme, a mini-genre that has waned somewhat in recent years. Children of Men could easily be a throwback to 1970s dystopian films set in infertile/breeding-restricted futures...
Children of Men (Universal), Alfonso Cuarón's dense, dark, and layered meditation on fertility, technology, immigration, war, love, and life itself may be the movie of the still-young millennium. And I don't just mean it's one of the best movies of the past six years. Children of Men, based on the 1992 novel by P.D. James, is the movie of the millennium because it's about our millennium, with its fractured, fearful politics and random bursts of violence and terror.The New York Times calls it a "superbly directed political thriller," saying it
may be something of a bummer, but it’s the kind of glorious bummer that lifts you to the rafters, transporting you with the greatness of its filmmaking.
Mostly, "The Serpent's Egg" is a movie of beautifully photographed weather and handsome period sets and costumes that encase characters who remain as anonymous as the bodies in a morgue. It's dead.
...the picture is a beauty to watch and yet another unique curiosity. The best praise for The Serpent's Egg is that it creates a grim little genre all its own, Politico-Film History-Paranoia.
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