Women's-magazine Freudian romantic drama about an icy hypertense blonde with an interesting collection of obsessions -- kleptomania, sexual disgust, a tendency to black out (or red out, actually) at the sight of anything red. Hitchcock pilots the thing with a vulgar, comfort-craving delight in Quality Living -- vast country estates, …
Julie Andrews's albatross. With Dick Van Dyke, David Tomlinson, and Glynis Johns; directed by Robert Stevenson.
After a mysterious egg is discovered, some look to exploit the discovery against the wishes of the egg's protectors, the tiny twins known as the Shobijin. When Godzilla appears and begins to go on a destructive rampage, the Shobijin are asked to seek the aid of Mothra in the hopes …
Epitomical Hollywood musical of the "roadshow" epoch: overdressed, overstuffed, overlong. A fancy dinner party of a movie (Lerner and Loewe via G.B. Shaw via Greek mythology), at which you just want to slip off your shoes and wiggle your toes. At the time, some people felt bad for Julie Andrews …
Epitomical Hollywood musical of the "roadshow" epoch: overdressed, overstuffed, overlong. A fancy dinner party of a movie (Lerner and Loewe via G.B. Shaw via Greek mythology), at which you just want to slip off your shoes and wiggle your toes. At the time, some people felt bad for Julie Andrews …
A small landmark in the overlapping annals of the American civil-rights movement and American independent cinema. Simple, tightly focussed, understated, a little overcautious in its treatment of a black Alabama laborer's best efforts to grow up and settle down with the genteel schoolteacher and preacher's daughter. Warm-blooded, three-dimensional portrayals by …
Emile De Antonio's condensation of the television tapes of the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings: it serves, at best, as an interest-exciter, or perhaps even better, as a doubt-stirrer. The slant is toward courtroom melodrama, with Joseph Welch leading the charge toward Justice. It is inevitable that worry grows about the information …
Better-than-average space opera: a sensible transplant of the Daniel Defoe tropical-island classic to the barren Red Planet (Death Valley stands in acceptably), with good survival details to compensate for the inadequacies of the production and of the extraterrestrial Man Friday. With Paul Mantee, Vic Lundin, Adam West; directed by Byron …
Small-scale class struggle inside a posh London townhouse; the principal contestants are Dirk Bogarde and James Fox, who combat one another with subtly arched eyebrows, slightly elevated upper lips, and unruly hanks of hair that fall loose across the forehead. This Harold Pinter-Joseph Losey potion causes a sensation that wavers …
Experimental Russian film, by Sergei Paradjanov, laced with occultism and eroticism and other untypical Russian exports. Not all will be willing, or able, to follow into the airiest reaches of this bit of Carpathian folklore, but the overpowering physicality of the production, the acrobatic camera and voluptuous color, will cross …
Philippe De Broca's take-off on cross-country chase thrillers, of the Hitchcock cloth, is generally cheerful, frequently predictable, and occasionally tiresome. The Brazilian backgrounds, and in particular Brasilia, make mouth-watering tourism advertisements. With Jean-Paul Belmondo and Françoise Dorleac.
All of the dialogue is wistfully, tunelessly sung (music by Michel Legrand), and the cheerful colors come from Candy Land. These aggressive stylistic devices soon tire themselves out, straining to overcome the pessimism which gloomily shadows the storyline; but they maintain respectable levels of taste and intelligence throughout. With Catherine …
All of the dialogue is wistfully, tunelessly sung (music by Michel Legrand), and the cheerful colors come from Candy Land. These aggressive stylistic devices soon tire themselves out, straining to overcome the pessimism which gloomily shadows the storyline; but they maintain respectable levels of taste and intelligence throughout. With Catherine …
An entomologist, on expedition in the desert, is taken captive by the natives of the region and imprisoned with a lonely widow at the bottom of a sand pit, there to toil into eternity. Hiroshi Teshigahara's neat little existential parable is thick with sensuous images and hothouse atmosphere. With Eiji …
Anthony Quinn laughs and dances and carouses and runs into the sea bare-assed, and his example teaches the introverted Britisher, Alan Bates, to unlimber a little. This is a role Quinn could play bound and gagged, and it would probably be better all around if he did play it that …