One Touch Of Venus All men today should behold the exquisite example of womanhood that was Ava Gardner, who with her beauty, smile, and charm had the ability onscreen to stir men within their soul and not just their loins as with so many of the loose, cheap starlets of today, and also possessed a […]
Outsiders Ensemble films featuring a cast of unknowns for which all or most of them went on to become major stars (and Hollywood players) are almost always fondly remembered, although they can be few and far between (American Graffiti, Fast Times) while other films that are openly acknowledged as being classics still saw their cast […]
Parenthood If there’s anything that one can give Ron Howard credit for, it’s his willingness to work in different genres without being pigeonholed in any one of them in particular, whether it be sci-fi (Cocoon), action (Backdraft), thriller (Ransom), or drama (Beautiful Mind). Here he takes on an ensemble comedy-drama about the lives of the […]
Passion Of The Christ Epic Hollywood movies about the life and meaning of Jesus Christ have traditionally turned out to be glossed over affairs, save for Martin Scorsese’s Last Temptation which outraged many with its (fantasized) depiction of a love scene between Willem Dafoe’s Jesus and Mary Magnalene. Few ever thought that another film with […]
Paths Of Glory It’s possible that the measure of the depths of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man can be measured in terms of our military establishment and mindset, as would be the case for Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 achievement, kind of a mirror image to his later Full Metal Jacket. Whereas Full Metal showed how […]
Payback: Straight Up (Director’s Cut) This new version of the 1999 Mel Gibson film, reconstructed by director Brian Helgeland and released on home video in 2006, comes across as a much more faithful rendering of the Film Noir crime genre whose origins inspired the story. As Helgeland was removed from the production way back when […]