Tag: movies

‘A Stranger in Town’ (1968): Entertaining spaghetti Western kicks off successful trilogy

Reduced, these past few weeks, to basically laying flat on my back (they took out 37 feet of my guts—I’m basically a soda fountain now), there hasn’t been much I can do but watch TV and movies. And certainly patterns of comfort TV-watching manifested themselves fairly quickly, including hours and hours of 70s TV (Emergency!,… Read More ‘A Stranger in Town’ (1968): Entertaining spaghetti Western kicks off successful trilogy

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‘The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case’ (1976): Deliciously awful Anthony Hopkins takes home the Emmy

So, wait: Lindbergh willingly sacrificed his kid to Nobel Prize-winning biologist Alexis Carrel in some Abrahamic gesture to provide Carrel a body for eugenics experimentation that went wrong…and then covered it up? That promotion for a new whack-job book conspiracy theory came over my news feed a while back, and sucker though I am for… Read More ‘The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case’ (1976): Deliciously awful Anthony Hopkins takes home the Emmy

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‘Virgin Witch’ (1972): UK horror flick is amusing & sexy the second time around

Now…according to the general consensus of new “film reviewers” (blech), those soy-drinking, pajama-clad, lip balm-wearing, unisex bathroom-using beta, um…males (I would assume), those vicious, fey dictators of what is acceptable, both morally and socially, when it comes to cinema, a movie like Virgin Witch is to be, at the very least, pilloried, mostly because it… Read More ‘Virgin Witch’ (1972): UK horror flick is amusing & sexy the second time around

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‘Bobby Deerfield’ (1977): Pollack & Pacino stall at the starting line

Another summer of fun, right? Hot dogs, baseball games, grandma’s old-fashioned cracker crumb cake, lazing on the front porch at dusk, watching the fireflies, waiting for the next government-sanctioned assassination attempt…it’s been a real scorcher. I’ll tell you what’s not hot—Al Pacino’s Bobby Deerfield, the ludicrous 1977 Sydney Pollack attempt to marry Formula One racing with… Read More ‘Bobby Deerfield’ (1977): Pollack & Pacino stall at the starting line

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‘Casino Royale’ (2006): Daniel Craig introduces a serious, gritty Bond. Is this what we wanted?

When I was writing about the best James Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, did I mention that the first thing Pierce Brosnan does every morning is kneel down in front of a shrine to Daniel Craig and mumble a silent prayer and “thank you” for Craig saving him from the moniker of “worst… Read More ‘Casino Royale’ (2006): Daniel Craig introduces a serious, gritty Bond. Is this what we wanted?

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‘The Swarm’ (1978): Is Irwin Allen’s disaster pic one of the worst movies ever made?

“The Swarm is coming!” I wish I could somehow convey how imperative and compelling and flat-out exciting those words were to me, way back in 1978, when they were so dramatically intoned in the trailer that seemed to pop up constantly on TV and at every other movie I went to that winter and spring.… Read More ‘The Swarm’ (1978): Is Irwin Allen’s disaster pic one of the worst movies ever made?

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‘Top Gun’ (1986): A lesson in mid ’80s Hollywood moviemaking

Hey: there are red flags in even the best relationships. I should have understood that right away when I started dating my wife all those years ago. Now, I let it slide when she said The French Connection and Bullitt were “boring.” And I said, “Fine, whatever,” when she wouldn’t let me hang up my Shaft’s Big… Read More ‘Top Gun’ (1986): A lesson in mid ’80s Hollywood moviemaking

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