With Thief, Mann leaves plain an American standard–the gangster movie. Halfway through the film, I wondered how it fit, as the energy the film opens with is gone. The film moves these awkwardly handled scenes without much flare. These scenes are presented as the standard dramatic scenes, but with something not quite right about the […]
Entries Tagged as 'United Artists'
Thief (1981, Michael Mann)
September 14th, 2009 · No Comments
Tagged: James Caan· John Seybold· Michael Mann· Tuesday Weld· United Artists· ★★★★
You Only Live Twice (1967, Lewis Gilbert)
May 31st, 2009 · 1 Comment
My wife walked out on You Only Live Twice. She got up and left about forty minutes in. I finished it because I figured forty minutes was halfway and I could make it. It was tough.
The film’s memorable because of the beginning, where James Bond dies. It’s an interesting scene, even though it’s never explained. The […]
Tagged: Donald Pleasence· Harold Jack Bloom· Ian Fleming· Lewis Gilbert· Roald Dahl· Sean Connery· United Artists· ⓏⒺⓇⓄ
The Killing (1956, Stanley Kubrick)
March 24th, 2009 · No Comments
I first saw The Killing when I was in high school. I had a great video store and one of the employees–lots of the employees were film school students–recommended the film to me, raving about Kubrick’s use of fractured narrative. He didn’t call it a fractured narrative, I don’t remember what he called it, maybe […]
Tagged: James Edwards· Jim Thompson· Lionel White· Stanley Kubrick· Sterling Hayden· United Artists· ★★★★
Killer’s Kiss (1955, Stanley Kubrick)
March 19th, 2009 · No Comments
The chase scene in Killer’s Kiss, which occupies almost the entire third act, is a marvel. From the moment Jamie Smith jumps out the window and hits the pavement, the film leaps beyond the potential Kubrick has instilled it with until that point. Before, there’s a lot of great low budget filmmaking, there’s a lot […]
Tagged: Stanley Kubrick· United Artists· ★★½
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955, Otto Preminger)
February 11th, 2009 · No Comments
There are a few problems with The Man with the Golden Arm. It’s hard to think of the film actually having any defects, since it’s such a brilliantly made motion picture. It was one of the first Preminger films I saw and was I ever surprised when they all weren’t so beautifully put together. The […]
Tagged: Eleanor Parker· Kim Novak· Lewis Meltzer· Nelson Algren· Otto Preminger· United Artists· Walter Newman· ★★★
Child’s Play (1988, Tom Holland)
January 22nd, 2009 · No Comments
Child’s Play barely makes any sense. Or maybe some of it does, but there’s a big voodoo component and it gets used as a crutch for the more fantastical elements (with its own problems with rationality). But the film opens with a shootout in downtown Chicago–Child’s Play uses its Chicago locations very well, never excessive–between […]
Tagged: Don Mancini· John Lafia· Tom Holland· United Artists· ★★
Valkyrie (2008, Bryan Singer)
December 30th, 2008 · No Comments
For Valkyrie to work, Bryan Singer needs to get–give or take–five minutes when the viewer isn’t entirely sure Adolf Hitler wasn’t assassinated. The entire premise of watching a film, a historically-based film, where the conclusion is well-known and suspending disbelief… he needs five minutes. Maybe the trick is casting Tom Cruise as a German. By […]
Tagged: Bill Nighy· Bryan Singer· Christopher McQuarrie· Kenneth Branagh· Michael Sheen· Nathan Alexander· Tom Cruise· Tom Wilkinson· United Artists· ★★½
