Miserably paced thriller, not just because of the slowness and distension of every individual scene, but also because of the rhythm-and-rhymeless placement of the dramatic climaxes. The movie gets off on the wrong foot with a Dial Soap wet dream (Angie Dickinson steaming up the shower by fondling a body …
Hellish vision of Victorian England, smoke and flame all over the place, with Hammer horror director Freddie Francis returning to the cinematographer's seat he used to occupy, and working masterfully in black-and-white as he did in The Innocents, Room at the Top, Sons and Lovers, and as few people know …
Wherein we learn a little something more about The Force and a big something more about Luke Skywalker's parentage, but the main idea seems to be to lay the groundwork for another Star Wars sequel rather than make any real headway. The moviemakers pretty well annihilate all narrative in a …
A lot of knowledge went into the characterization of the movie-buff hero, beginning with his ritual of going through the coming week's TV Guide and circling the movies not to be missed (99 River Street, The Big Sleep, etc.), and continuing through his wardrobe, his bedroom decor, his job, his …
From Freshman auditions to Senior graduation, Alan Parker chaperones one entire class through New York City's prestigious High School of the Performing Arts. Parker's own lack of discipline, or lack of form, allows the students to carom at random among the conventions of the coming-of-age movie and the aspiring-artist movie, …
Peter Sellers's final film, released posthumously. In these circumstances, it adds a certain something, if not exactly humor, for him to take on the role of an enfeebled Fu Manchu, who at 168 years old has still not managed to conquer the world and is now gathering the secret ingredients …
The USS Nimitz, on routine maneuvers in the Pacific, encounters a bit of time turbulence, so to call it, and emerges on the other side the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, with a full arsenal of nuclear-age armaments and a chance to rewrite the history books. "It …
Frank Sinatra has a nice, gentle way with a line, making for easy listening, even when the lines go painfully bad, as they especially tend to do during the hospital visits to his ailing wife that take him away from his police duties. On a couple of these occasions he …
There are a few directorial touches which indicate that Buck Henry, the writer and director, did not go completely comatose during the making of this misguided political spoof. Best of these is the change of color in the President's face after he has imbibed an African beverage composed of donkey …
Much fun, when not trying extra-extra hard also to be funny. A bit like a Barbarella on a much bigger budget. It's a cruel fact of fantasy that money counts for more in this sort of endeavor than in most others, and Dino De Laurentiis, who controlled the purse strings …
Members of the crack narcotics team begin turning up dead, with their windpipes perplexingly crushed, and one of their surviving teammates theorizes, "Maybe it's one of them karate weirdos like in the movies." Enter Chuck Norris, who takes time off from training for his next defense of the middleweight full-contact …
Plausible enough conspiracy theory founded on a couple of established facts: the Nazi experiments with synthetic fuel and the present public mistrust of American oil companies. And an interesting enough chain of events leading from a murder in Beverly Hills to another at the Berlin Wall, with several more in …
An update on the teenage rebellion at the start of the Eighties reveals that only the faces have changed. Four fifteen-year-old girls, reasonably well differentiated from one another, are dragged through an overstated but unmeaningful sequence of events and a storm of fancy photography: pale and powdery David Hamilton "studies" …