Drama Rated R
"…has a central visual metaphor that’s so lovely and so inspired that it single-handedly elevates the movie above its forced quirkiness and Sundance mannerisms."
Thriller Rated NR
Criterion’s exhaustive The Complete Mr. Arkadin includes not two but three versions of Orson Welles’ disputed mystery for critical comparison. Sort of a freak-show spin on Welles’ own Citizen Kane, Mr. Arkadin follows a con man (Robert Arden) on an investigation into the past of the shady title character (Welles), an eccentric billionaire whose business
This John Le Carre adaptation strips the spy game of its romantic trappings and depicts its players, as one character says, ‘as men playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives.’ Director Martin Ritt uses stark, black-and-white cinematography and a documentary-like distance. Like many of its characters, the movie wears a poker face.
Comedy Rated PG-13
Writer-director-star Albert Brooks trumps himself while playing a smug American comedian named Albert Brooks, who is tapped by the U.S. government to go on a fact-finding mission to India and Pakistan. Once you get the movie’s central, oft-repeated joke – that isolated America is desperately out of touch with the cultures it is warring against
Drama Rated NR
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington runs on just the sort of idealism that gave director Frank Capra (It’s a Wonderful Life) his reputation for cornball sentimentality. Yet Capra could pull this tone off better than anyone, especially when he teamed up with James Stewart, an actor of towering sincerity. Stewart stars here as Jefferson Smith,
New on Blu-ray, Samuel Fuller’s pulp melodrama would be overkill if it wasn’t so crazily entertaining.
Horror Rated NR
“The definitive zombie picture.”
Along with 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire, also directed by Elia Kazan, this announced Brando as the new paragon of screen acting. His was a raw, unpredictable talent, one of guttural bursts, not crisp line readings. Here he plays Terry Malloy, a former boxer and current longshoreman caught between a corrupt union and his conscience.
Match Point marked a surprising return to vital filmmaking form for Woody Allen, but that movie had the distinct advantage of not being a comedy. Scoop, in which Allen reteams with Match Point star Scarlett Johansson, ostensibly is, and therein lies the problem. Johansson plays a bumbling journalism student who gets a tip that could
Youth, beauty, love, fame – all of these fade, as La Dolce Vita so poignantly reveals, but thankfully the movies never do. Director Federico Fellini’s epic account of our endless chase of “the sweet life” looks as shimmering and feels as vital as ever – even though its ironic message is that the party always
