Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 26th, 2005
Synopsis
Lloyd Bridges is the Major in the Canadian forces who is seeking redemption for a failed raid. His audacious plan is to attack the German’s fortified docks in occupied France. His scheme is opposed by Brit Captain Andrew Keir, whose son died in the earlier raid, but Keir finds himself captaining the substandard ship as the raid begins.
This is pretty run-of-the-mill WWII action, the kind of film that is virtually indistinguishable from uncountable others, all fodder for three-a.m. ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 26th, 2005
Synopsis
Miner’s daughter Barbara Stanwyck sets her cap for John Boles, a New England aristocrat who has fled financial disgrace and sought honest work far from home. She lands him, and they marry, but almost immediately their very different backgrounds create tension. When he finds work in New York, she refuses to move with him, and they grow further apart. Meanwhile, their daughter spends most of her time with Stanwyck, but her visits to New York become more and more wonderful, as far as she is con...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 15th, 2005
Synopsis
Harvey Keitel is making a film about a relationship that disintegrates into terrible violence.His cast are James Russo and Madonna, and they have a pretty fraught relationship themselvesoff the set. Physical and mental brutality ooze from the film into real life, and Keitel descendsinto this hell, too.
Fresh off Bad Lieutenant, director Abel Ferrara, writer Nicholas St. John and Keitelplunge into the heart of darkness yet again. The shooting of the film has a...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 15th, 2005
Synopsis
Down-on-their-luck adventurers Chuck Norris and Louis Gosset are approached by theslightly flaky Melody Anderson to help her track down a horde of Aztec gold. They proceed totraipse about Central America, experiencing one sub-Indiana Jones adventure after another,racing to reach the treasure before a villain with (yes) an eye-patch.
J. Lee Thompson’s film doesn’t take itself seriously for a moment, but that doesn’t mean it’sactually funny. It isn’t, much, and the by...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 13th, 2005
Synopsis
Michael Redgrave is a cynical British journalist posted in 1952 Saigon, happily far awayfrom his estranged wife. He views both sides of the French and Communist war with equalindifference, and likes the comfortable arrangement he has with his Vietnamese girlfriend(Giorgia Moll), a woman whose intelligence he hardly seems to respect. Everything goes tosmash for him when a polite young American (Audie Murphy) shows up. Redgrave finds hisidealism suspicious, if not actively da...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 4th, 2005
Synopsis
The Amityville Horror (1979) remains one of the most successful haunted house movies ever. Based on a supposedly true story (emphasis on “supposedly”), the film sees George and Kathy Lutz (James Brolin and Margot Kidder) buy their dream home, only to be driven out by supernatural events (little girl makes friends with demonic piggie, blood runs from the walls, and so on). In scenes that have so little to do with the rest of the action they might almost belong to a separate movie, Rod ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 30th, 2005
Synopsis
Don Cheadle plays Paul Rusesabagina, house manager of the luxury Hotel Mille-Collinesin Kigali. He does business with everybody, and strokes the egos of the powerful, and doesn’treally believe the anti-Tutsi sentiment being built up will really amount to anything. He is wrong,he discovers, when the genocide is unleashed. He gathers some 1200 refugees in the hotel, and,deprived of any help from the outside, must use all his wits to keep these people, along withhimself and hi...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 29th, 2005
Synopsis
“They keep falling in and out of love,” reads the tagline, and that quite nicely sums up thefilm. David Steinberg is the neurotic manager of an art-house cinema, and Susan Sarandon hascome to NYC to become a journalist. They are different, but there’s chemistry, BUT sometimesthe chemistry is of the wrong kind, and the movie charts the ups and downs of their relationship.“In the tradition of Annie Hall” the case boasts, and the case could be made that it is alittle to...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 25th, 2005
Synopsis
The scene is Mexico, and the time is now, though it might as well be the 19th Century. A richlandowner’s daughter is pregnant, and her father goes as far as breaking her bones to find outwho the father is. He then demands the man’s head. Squads of minions fan out over Mexico.Two (Gig Young and Robert Webber) happen upon Warren Oates, who know the man they’relooking for. When Oates finds out that Garcia is already dead, he smells easy money, and salliesfor with girlfriend Is...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 21st, 2005
Synopsis
During the gold rush, Miriam Hopkins arrives in the lawless new city of San Francisco, onlyto discover that her fiancé has been killed. Penniless, but determined to make her way, she hastop-dog casino owner Edward G. Robinson fall in love with her, though she strategically holdshim at bay. She makes a financial killing, but the price she has paid is driven home when sheencounters poet/prospector Joel McCrea.
McCrea is an odd casting choice as a poet, and he is a poe...
