Rent it now: Francois Truffaut’s ‘The Wild Child’
Black-and-white moviemaking more or less ceased in the mid-1960s when the movie studios began to receive significantly lower fees from TV networks for movies that were not shot in color. Despite the...
View ArticleElizabeth Taylor R.I.P.: pop culture revolutionary
The first phrase that popped into my head when I heard about the death of Elizabeth Taylor this morning was “erotic vagrancy.” That’s what the Vatican charged the actress with while she was conducting...
View Article‘Strawberry Statement’: nostalgia for student revolutionaries
1970 was a turbulent, confused year in America and that cultural craziness was reflected in the movies that Hollywood released at the start of a new decade. The surprise success of a series of oddball...
View Article‘Skidoo’: when the Hollywood old guard tried to get hip
The Otto Preminger film “Skidoo” flopped upon opening in late 1968 and then became a minor cult film after it vanished in a way that few big budget Hollywood films ever do. For more than 40 years, the...
View ArticleBad movies we love: ‘Beyond the Valley of the Dolls’
Although it was first conceived as a semi-legitimate sequel to the 1967 hit “Valley of the Dolls,” the Russ Meyer-Roger Ebert film “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” was considered so tawdry in 1970 that...
View ArticleWhen Hollywood decided to get a little naughty
From Jan. 27, 2011 – The excellent Warner Archive division of Warner Home Video — which has been releasing made-to-order DVDs of some of the studio’s more obscure titles — has just put out the 1962...
View Article‘Paul on Mazursky’: exploring an underrated filmmaker’s work
Film director books presented in a question-and-answer format are often tiresome, and full of obfuscation, but Sam Wasson’s “Paul on Mazursky” (Wesleyan University Press) captures smart talk about the...
View ArticleOscar madness: try to remember Cary Grant &‘Rocky’
It’s the movie buff’s equivalent of the Super Bowl. A huge TV event that is anticipated for weeks — months? — and then forgotten almost immediately. At two recent Oscar library discussions that I led,...
View Article‘Alex in Wonderland’ shows Hollywood in 1970s breakdown mode
As a movie, the 1970 Paul Mazursky comedy “Alex in Wonderland” is only so-so, but for students of Hollywood it’s a vivid time capsule of a transition period in film history. The very eccentric and...
View ArticleMPAA tweaks movie ratings — again — on violence quotient
Few elements on the American cultural scene are as mocked and as irrelevant as the ratings system of the Motion Picture Association of America. Anyone who goes to the movies on a regular basis knows...
View Article‘Casting By’ — finding the right actors for classic movies
HBO presented Tom Donahue’s excellent 2012 documentary “Casting By” last week, and if you missed it you should check it out on HBO Go or on demand pronto. The 90-minute film examines the work of movie...
View Article‘For the Love of Movies’ — Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris & Co.
The 2007 Gerald Peary documentary “For the Love of Movies” is now available via Netflix streaming, and it’s an entertaining look at the parallel histories of movies and movie critics over the past...
View Article‘The Apartment’ & the start of the 1960s in Hollywood
Decades can run together sometimes — fashions and art trends at the end of the 1980s weren’t that different from what happened four or five years later — but movie-wise, the 1960s started off...
View Article‘Erotic vagrancy’ or: When Elizabeth met Richard
So many books have been written about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton — and the most important movies they made together — that you would think the well ran dry on “Liz & Dick” fodder many...
View Article‘Roadshow!’: the death of the movie musical
It’s one of the ironies of the current era that as mainstream movies have gotten worse, the quality of books about movies has never been higher. Mark Harris, William Mann, Ethan Mordden and several...
View ArticleBad Movies We Love: ‘Once is Not Enough’
The headline here is a tad deceptive. “Once is Not Enough” is unquestionably bad, but “love” is the wrong word for my feelings about this 1975 Paramount adaptation of the Jacqueline Susann bestseller....
View Article#FridayReads ‘The Escape’: a paranoid thriller with heart
40 years ago, there was a wave of wonderful paranoid political thrillers that included “The Parallax View,” “Three Days of the Condor” and “All the President’s Men.” These pictures showed our...
View Article‘Alex in Wonderland’ shows Hollywood in 1970s breakdown mode
As a movie, the 1970 Paul Mazursky comedy “Alex in Wonderland” is only so-so, but for students of Hollywood it’s a vivid time capsule of a transition period in film history. The very eccentric and...
View ArticleBad movies we love: ‘Beyond the Valley of the Dolls’
Although it was first conceived as a semi-legitimate sequel to the 1967 hit “Valley of the Dolls,” the Russ Meyer-Roger Ebert film “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” was considered so tawdry in 1970 that...
View Article‘Alex in Wonderland’ shows Hollywood in 1970s breakdown mode
As a movie, the 1970 Paul Mazursky comedy “Alex in Wonderland” is only so-so, but for students of Hollywood it’s a vivid time capsule of a transition period in film history. The very eccentric and...
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