Director Joe Dante’s special skill with actors shines in this overachieving ‘juvenile’ space adventure that overflows with The Sense of Wonder. It is now in crystal 4K clarity. With a boost from aliens unknown, intrepid space cadets Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix and Jason Presson construct a fantastic vehicle; they dare to escape from the petty…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, we take a look at three films in the science fiction realm. We also have three earth-bound wines to pair with them. Explorers, from 1985, was the film breakthrough for Ethan…
Dennis Bartok brings an oddball film back from obscurity — an unreleased big budget comic Sci-fi musical given a big 1970 premiere, only to drop out of sight for decades. The immediate point of interest is that its star is the late Olivia Newton-John, a full eight years before her big breakout co-starring with John…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, it’s a John Frankenheimer party. Three Frankenheimer films and a wine pairing for each. Frankenheimer directed Dead Bang back in 1989. It has Don Johnson as a Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department…
Criterion’s reboot of their branded line Eclipse goes in a great direction with a remaster of Carlos Saura and Antonio Gades’ marvelous flamenco movies of the 1980s. The three features together did a lot for flamenco’s international standing. The most popular was the dynamic and sexy flamenco ballet Carmen, a picture that filled art theaters…
It’s glamour time with one of Joan Crawford’s best star vehicles, a core shopgirl-to-Park Avenue saga that’s All About Joan. Clark Gable provides dreamboat chemistry as her Big Apple conquest, but every scene belongs to Crawford. She speaks not only her lines but sometimes Clark’s speeches as well. Being a kept woman has its downside…
A highlight of this year’s awards season becomes a handsome, rewarding Criterion release. Joachim Trier’s drama finds power in the intersection of ‘normal life,’ ambition in the arts, and the way family secrets meld with national history. Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinseve command our attention as a father and daughter split by ‘art and resentment,’…
Spaghetti westerns were the rage in 1969, as long as the action was constant and the body count high. An Italo producer made a lucrative deal with MGM for a ‘Dirty Dozen western’ with the name star Peter Graves. International success was guaranteed with the casting of Japanese star Tetsuro Tanba. The Dario Argento story…
TFH Guru Allan Arkush’s The Last Reel video essay series gets literate this week! How I Became A Teenage Beatnik covers the lure of a good story in books ranging from The Hardy Boys, Animal Farm, sci-fi and Sputnik, the banning of JD Salinger, 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 by the Fort Lee High School Library…
