"What magical spell does it cast on all who read it? What is the secret of The NeverEnding Story?" This unforgettably fantasy adventure movie originally opened in theaters in West German in April 1984 - a full 40 years ago this month. In celebration of its 40th anniversary, and for a look back at a classic trailer that has re-appeared online, enjoy these previews for Wolfgang Petersen's classic The NeverEnding Story. In this big screen adventure, a troubled boy dives into a wondrous fantasy world through the pages of a book. He ends up journeying through strange lands, encountering all kinds of creatures both kind & evil, making some friends & enemies along the way. Barret Oliver stars as Bastian, with Noah Hathaway as Atreyu, Tami Stronach as the "Moon Child", plus Patricia Hayes, Sydney Bromley, Gerald McRaney, and Moses Gunn. If you grew up in the 80s or 90s like me, you...
- 4/28/2024
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Richard Roundtree, the ultracool actor who helped open the door to a generation of Black filmmakers and performers with his portrayal of private eye John Shaft, “the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about,” died Tuesday. He was 81.
Roundtree died at his home in Los Angeles of pancreatic cancer, his manager, Patrick McMinn, told The Hollywood Reporter.
He was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993 and had a double mastectomy. “Breast cancer is not gender specific,” he said four years later. “And men have this cavalier attitude about health issues. I got such positive feedback because I spoke out about it, and it’s been quite a number of years now. I’m a survivor.”
Roundtree also portrayed the title character opposite Peter O’Toole as Robinson Crusoe in Man Friday, was featured as an army sergeant opposite Laurence Olivier as Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the Korean...
Roundtree died at his home in Los Angeles of pancreatic cancer, his manager, Patrick McMinn, told The Hollywood Reporter.
He was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993 and had a double mastectomy. “Breast cancer is not gender specific,” he said four years later. “And men have this cavalier attitude about health issues. I got such positive feedback because I spoke out about it, and it’s been quite a number of years now. I’m a survivor.”
Roundtree also portrayed the title character opposite Peter O’Toole as Robinson Crusoe in Man Friday, was featured as an army sergeant opposite Laurence Olivier as Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the Korean...
- 10/25/2023
- by Chris Koseluk
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
When you consider the evidence, the 1970s was the greatest crime movie period since the 1930s. Maybe it’s because of the grim film stock, but those 10 years were so filled with the criminal element even a highly-rated political journalism feature like All the President’s Men (1976) is really an investigation into indictable acts. The decade is defined by Francis Ford Coppola’s first two The Godfather movies, but those tell the story of the dons who live in compounds on Long Island. Most illicit infractions are committed on the street, and so many fall between the cracks.
Crime and gangster movies historically and consistently break boundaries in motion picture art. This is especially true when independent filmmakers muscle their way in packing something heavy. The 1970s was an experimental decade for motion pictures with wildly varied visions behind the lens. Some of these films were considered old-fashioned, others have proven...
Crime and gangster movies historically and consistently break boundaries in motion picture art. This is especially true when independent filmmakers muscle their way in packing something heavy. The 1970s was an experimental decade for motion pictures with wildly varied visions behind the lens. Some of these films were considered old-fashioned, others have proven...
- 8/12/2023
- by David Crow
- Den of Geek
What would Hollywood be without a good ole Blaxploitation film? And now that “They Cloned Tyrone” has hit Netflix screens, conversations about the Blaxploitation movies that crawled so that “They Cloned Tyrone” could pimp walk have come to the forefront.
Juel Taylor’s film welcomes watchers to The Glen, a normal, everyday neighborhood where its predominately Black residents live out their lives shopping, going to church and enjoying the fruits of their labor. However, beneath the surface, but right in front of their eyes, the government is executing a plot to keep the community in an endless cycle of unhealthy behavior that ultimately blocks them from mental and financial wellness.
Like many Blaxploitation films, “They Cloned Tyrone” creatively calls out and highlights the systemic issues Black community faces while also celebrating Black culture and Black people’s perseverance.
When “They Cloned Tyrone” hit Netflix, people online began discussing the films that influenced it,...
Juel Taylor’s film welcomes watchers to The Glen, a normal, everyday neighborhood where its predominately Black residents live out their lives shopping, going to church and enjoying the fruits of their labor. However, beneath the surface, but right in front of their eyes, the government is executing a plot to keep the community in an endless cycle of unhealthy behavior that ultimately blocks them from mental and financial wellness.
Like many Blaxploitation films, “They Cloned Tyrone” creatively calls out and highlights the systemic issues Black community faces while also celebrating Black culture and Black people’s perseverance.
When “They Cloned Tyrone” hit Netflix, people online began discussing the films that influenced it,...
- 8/3/2023
- by Raquel "Rocky" Harris
- The Wrap
Harlan County, USA
Filmmakers loves an underdog and movies have a long tradition of supporting the rights of workers, dating all the way back to the silent era. Here are some classic movies that celebrate workers’ right to strike for better wages and safer working conditions and the sometimes unlikely allies they find along the way. Many are based on true stories, including John Sayles’ masterful “Matewan,” about a coal miner strike in West Virginia, as well as Barbara Kopple’s Oscar-winning documentary, “Harlan County, USA.”
Photo credit: Disney
“Newsies” (1992)
“Headlines don’t sell papes, Newsies sell papes!” In this exuberant and pro-worker musical, Christian Bale’s Jack Kelly leads a group of newsboys in a strike against penny-pinching newspaper owner Joseph Pulitzer. They’re aided by Bill Pullman’s kindly, reform-minded journalist and, of course, Teddy Roosevelt, who was then governor of New York.
Photo credit: 20th Century
“Norma Rae...
Filmmakers loves an underdog and movies have a long tradition of supporting the rights of workers, dating all the way back to the silent era. Here are some classic movies that celebrate workers’ right to strike for better wages and safer working conditions and the sometimes unlikely allies they find along the way. Many are based on true stories, including John Sayles’ masterful “Matewan,” about a coal miner strike in West Virginia, as well as Barbara Kopple’s Oscar-winning documentary, “Harlan County, USA.”
Photo credit: Disney
“Newsies” (1992)
“Headlines don’t sell papes, Newsies sell papes!” In this exuberant and pro-worker musical, Christian Bale’s Jack Kelly leads a group of newsboys in a strike against penny-pinching newspaper owner Joseph Pulitzer. They’re aided by Bill Pullman’s kindly, reform-minded journalist and, of course, Teddy Roosevelt, who was then governor of New York.
Photo credit: 20th Century
“Norma Rae...
- 7/24/2023
- by Sharon Knolle
- The Wrap
Richard Roundtree’s two-fisted detective tale burst on the scene announcing that a craze called Blaxploitation was on the way. No matter that the movie is somewhat slow and drab — John Shaft was the identification figure denied black audiences for 60 years, a hero who takes no guff from nobody and consistently tells The Man where to head in. Even bigger was the music theme by Isaac Hayes, which transforms Shaft’s casual stroll through Times Square into an iconic image of the 1970s. Criterion’s presentation of Gordon Parks’ smash hit has the original feature in 4K Uhd and in Blu-ray with the first sequel Shaft’s Big Score! in Blu-ray only.
Shaft
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1130
1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 100 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 21, 2022 / 39.95
Starring: Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi, Christopher St. John, Gwenn Mitchell, Lawrence Pressman, Victor Arnold, Sherri Brewer,...
Shaft
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1130
1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 100 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 21, 2022 / 39.95
Starring: Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi, Christopher St. John, Gwenn Mitchell, Lawrence Pressman, Victor Arnold, Sherri Brewer,...
- 6/18/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Tommy Lane, an actor and stuntman who worked in films including Cotton Comes to Harlem, Live and Let Die and Shaft, has died. He was 83.
Lane died Monday at Florida Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale after a long bout with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his daughter Kamala Lane announced.
Lane also appeared in such other films as Shamus (1973), starring Burt Reynolds; The Pilot (1980), directed by and starring Cliff Robertson; and Eureka (1983), helmed by Nicolas Roeg.
In Gordon Parks’ Shaft (1971), Lane played a gangster named Leroy employed by Harlem crime boss Bumpy (Moses Gunn) who winds up falling out of an office window ...
Lane died Monday at Florida Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale after a long bout with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his daughter Kamala Lane announced.
Lane also appeared in such other films as Shamus (1973), starring Burt Reynolds; The Pilot (1980), directed by and starring Cliff Robertson; and Eureka (1983), helmed by Nicolas Roeg.
In Gordon Parks’ Shaft (1971), Lane played a gangster named Leroy employed by Harlem crime boss Bumpy (Moses Gunn) who winds up falling out of an office window ...
- 11/30/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
Tommy Lane, an actor and stuntman who worked in films including Cotton Comes to Harlem, Live and Let Die and Shaft, has died. He was 83.
Lane died Monday at Florida Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale after a long bout with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his daughter Kamala Lane announced.
Lane also appeared in such other films as Shamus (1973), starring Burt Reynolds; The Pilot (1980), directed by and starring Cliff Robertson; and Eureka (1983), helmed by Nicolas Roeg.
In Gordon Parks’ Shaft (1971), Lane played a gangster named Leroy employed by Harlem crime boss Bumpy (Moses Gunn) who winds up falling out of an office window ...
Lane died Monday at Florida Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale after a long bout with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his daughter Kamala Lane announced.
Lane also appeared in such other films as Shamus (1973), starring Burt Reynolds; The Pilot (1980), directed by and starring Cliff Robertson; and Eureka (1983), helmed by Nicolas Roeg.
In Gordon Parks’ Shaft (1971), Lane played a gangster named Leroy employed by Harlem crime boss Bumpy (Moses Gunn) who winds up falling out of an office window ...
- 11/30/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
George Seaton’s literal feel-good comedy is the flipside of pandemic films like Contagion: a powerful virus ‘cures’ grumpiness and bad vibes, encouraging a kind of Urban Utopia. The picture has nothing more to say than ‘have a nice day,’ yet it’s difficult to argue with any positive sentiment, especially these days. George Peppard and Mary Tyler Moore battle nobly with the material, which varies from good parody (Dom DeLuise) to awful vaudeville schtick to wafer-thin satire to terrible musical interludes. A Toucan bird from South America steals the show — his trainer Ray Berwick should have won an Oscar.
What’s So Bad About Feeling Good?
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1968 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 94 min. / Street Date August 24, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: George Peppard, Mary Tyler Moore, Susan Saint James, Don Stroud, Dom DeLuise, John McMartin, Charles Lane, Nathaniel Frey, George Furth, Morty Gunty, Frank Campanella, Thelma Ritter,...
What’s So Bad About Feeling Good?
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1968 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 94 min. / Street Date August 24, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: George Peppard, Mary Tyler Moore, Susan Saint James, Don Stroud, Dom DeLuise, John McMartin, Charles Lane, Nathaniel Frey, George Furth, Morty Gunty, Frank Campanella, Thelma Ritter,...
- 7/17/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Douglas Turner Ward, the director, actor and playwright who co-founded the landmark, influential Off Broadway Black theater group the Negro Ensemble Company, died Saturday, Feb. 20, at his home in New York City. He was 90.
His death was announced by his wife Diana Ward.
Ward had already begun a solid New York stage acting career in the 1950s and ’60s – including Off Broadway roles in The Iceman Cometh and on Broadway in A Raisin in the Sun – when, according to The New York Times, he wrote a 1966 editorial for that newspaper headlined “American Theater: For Whites Only?” The article called for the establishment of a Black repertory theater company. Turner wrote, “Not in the future…but now!”
A year later the Ford Foundation awarded a $434,000 grant to create the Negro Ensemble Company with Ward as artistic director, along with Robert Hooks and Gerald S. Krone in other leadership roles.
The Company...
His death was announced by his wife Diana Ward.
Ward had already begun a solid New York stage acting career in the 1950s and ’60s – including Off Broadway roles in The Iceman Cometh and on Broadway in A Raisin in the Sun – when, according to The New York Times, he wrote a 1966 editorial for that newspaper headlined “American Theater: For Whites Only?” The article called for the establishment of a Black repertory theater company. Turner wrote, “Not in the future…but now!”
A year later the Ford Foundation awarded a $434,000 grant to create the Negro Ensemble Company with Ward as artistic director, along with Robert Hooks and Gerald S. Krone in other leadership roles.
The Company...
- 2/23/2021
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Golden Anniversaries, which is co-presented by Cinema St. Louis (Csl) and the St. Louis Public Library, features classic films celebrating their 50th anniversaries. This fourth edition of the event will highlight films from 1971.
Because in-person screenings remain problematic during the pandemic, Cinema St. Louis will hold free online conversations on the films, with people watching the films on their own but gathering virtually to discuss them.
Film critics, film academics, and filmmakers will offer introductory remarks and then participate in discussions about the films. In addition to a fine selection of St. Louis critics, Golden Anniversaries will feature several experts from elsewhere.
The conversations will be offered as free livestreams at 7:30 Pm on the second Monday of every month in 2021 except November, when the St. Louis International Film Festival (Sliff) hopes to feature several in-person Golden Anniversaries selections.
The first four discussions are already scheduled:
Jan. 11: Peter Bogdanovich...
Because in-person screenings remain problematic during the pandemic, Cinema St. Louis will hold free online conversations on the films, with people watching the films on their own but gathering virtually to discuss them.
Film critics, film academics, and filmmakers will offer introductory remarks and then participate in discussions about the films. In addition to a fine selection of St. Louis critics, Golden Anniversaries will feature several experts from elsewhere.
The conversations will be offered as free livestreams at 7:30 Pm on the second Monday of every month in 2021 except November, when the St. Louis International Film Festival (Sliff) hopes to feature several in-person Golden Anniversaries selections.
The first four discussions are already scheduled:
Jan. 11: Peter Bogdanovich...
- 1/7/2021
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
“Pipe Dreams”
By Raymond Benson
Back in 1973, producer Ely Landau and his wife Edie launched a daring and unprecedented cinema series that played in the U.S. for two “seasons,” with a total of fourteen titles (but only thirteen were shown), all renowned works—classic and modern—originally produced on the stage. It was called the American Film Theatre. (A review of a DVD box set of the entire series appeared on Cinema Retro previously. Click here to read.)
The concept tried something different. The directive was to take a great stage play, not change a word, and in most cases, use the actual play script as the screenplay. The next step was to hire an accomplished film director to interpret the text for the film medium but stay faithful to the play. Sometimes the director was the same person who helmed the original stage production. A further step was...
By Raymond Benson
Back in 1973, producer Ely Landau and his wife Edie launched a daring and unprecedented cinema series that played in the U.S. for two “seasons,” with a total of fourteen titles (but only thirteen were shown), all renowned works—classic and modern—originally produced on the stage. It was called the American Film Theatre. (A review of a DVD box set of the entire series appeared on Cinema Retro previously. Click here to read.)
The concept tried something different. The directive was to take a great stage play, not change a word, and in most cases, use the actual play script as the screenplay. The next step was to hire an accomplished film director to interpret the text for the film medium but stay faithful to the play. Sometimes the director was the same person who helmed the original stage production. A further step was...
- 4/22/2020
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
THR to look back at her career highlights. "I would say my career began with high points." She speaks fondly of the months after her sophomore year at Howard University when she spent the summer with the Negro Ensemble Company in New York. "This was during its heyday. The actors in that company were Moses Gunn, Hattie Winston, Rosalind Cash, Frances Foster, Esther Rolle," she says. "Robert Hooks was one of the directors of the theater. Douglas Turner Ward ...
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Shaft’s Big Score! / Shaft in Africa
Blu ray
Warner Archive
1972, 1973 / 2.35 : 1 / 104, 112 Min.
Starring Richard Roundtree, Vonetta McGee, Frank Finley
Directed by Gordon Parks, John Guillermin
Released in 1971 during a notoriously divisive presidential campaign, Shaft was both a middle finger to the powers that be and a sexually charged Black Power taunt – a combination that convulsed 42nd Street audiences while scaring the bejesus out of your average Nixon voter.
For that grindhouse crowd, Richard Roundtree, not Nixon, was The One and his portrayal of the street-smart detective reached far beyond The Deuce – director Gordon Parks’ film cost only $500,000 but brought in 13 million at the box office. Sequels were just around the corner.
A year later Shaft’s Big Score! reunited Parks, Roundtree and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman while quadrupling the budget in the bargain – the streets are still mean but the volatile mood swings that made the 1971 film a cultural touchstone...
Blu ray
Warner Archive
1972, 1973 / 2.35 : 1 / 104, 112 Min.
Starring Richard Roundtree, Vonetta McGee, Frank Finley
Directed by Gordon Parks, John Guillermin
Released in 1971 during a notoriously divisive presidential campaign, Shaft was both a middle finger to the powers that be and a sexually charged Black Power taunt – a combination that convulsed 42nd Street audiences while scaring the bejesus out of your average Nixon voter.
For that grindhouse crowd, Richard Roundtree, not Nixon, was The One and his portrayal of the street-smart detective reached far beyond The Deuce – director Gordon Parks’ film cost only $500,000 but brought in 13 million at the box office. Sequels were just around the corner.
A year later Shaft’s Big Score! reunited Parks, Roundtree and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman while quadrupling the budget in the bargain – the streets are still mean but the volatile mood swings that made the 1971 film a cultural touchstone...
- 5/28/2019
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
Donald Westlake’s lovably luckless crook John Dortmunder is brought to life by Robert Redford, in a lightweight crime caper engineered by top talent: screenwriter William Goldman and director Peter Yates. Redford’s partner is a worrisome, talkative George Segal; Moses Gunn is the unhappy client, Ron Liebman a jolly master of all things technical and Zero Mostel a major obstacle in the obtaining of a priceless diamond.
The Hot Rock
Blu-ray
Twilight Time
1972 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 100 min. / How to Steal a Diamond in Four Uneasy Lessons / Street Date August 21, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95
Starring: Robert Redford, George Segal, Ron Leibman, Paul Sand, Moses Gunn, Zero Mostel, William Redfield, Lynne Gordon, Robert Weil, Christopher Guest.
Cinematography: Ed Brown
Film Editors: Fred W. Berger, Frank P. Keller
Original Music: Quincy Jones
Written by William Goldman from a novel by Donald E. Westlake
Produced by Hal Landers, Bobby Roberts...
The Hot Rock
Blu-ray
Twilight Time
1972 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 100 min. / How to Steal a Diamond in Four Uneasy Lessons / Street Date August 21, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95
Starring: Robert Redford, George Segal, Ron Leibman, Paul Sand, Moses Gunn, Zero Mostel, William Redfield, Lynne Gordon, Robert Weil, Christopher Guest.
Cinematography: Ed Brown
Film Editors: Fred W. Berger, Frank P. Keller
Original Music: Quincy Jones
Written by William Goldman from a novel by Donald E. Westlake
Produced by Hal Landers, Bobby Roberts...
- 8/28/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Following the news that Miloš Forman has passed away at 86, tributes are pouring in to the two-time Academy Winner. Danny DeVito, who worked with him on both “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Man on the Moon,” released a statement: “He was a dear friend and I will miss his. My thoughts go out to his family. May he Rest In Peace.”
Jim Carrey, Mia Farrow, Edgar Wright, and many others shared their remembrances on Twitter.
Another great one passes through the doorway. Milos Foreman. What a force. A lovely man. I’m glad we got to play together. It was a monumental experience. ;^) pic.twitter.com/wzgmOibDHs
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) April 14, 2018
Proof that the most brilliant of filmmakers could also be unfailingly kind, generous, humble and loyal. Thank you Milos Forman pic.twitter.com/btUmryxjRr
— Mia Farrow (@MiaFarrow) April 14, 2018
Milos the magnificent! čest k jeho památce (honour...
Jim Carrey, Mia Farrow, Edgar Wright, and many others shared their remembrances on Twitter.
Another great one passes through the doorway. Milos Foreman. What a force. A lovely man. I’m glad we got to play together. It was a monumental experience. ;^) pic.twitter.com/wzgmOibDHs
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) April 14, 2018
Proof that the most brilliant of filmmakers could also be unfailingly kind, generous, humble and loyal. Thank you Milos Forman pic.twitter.com/btUmryxjRr
— Mia Farrow (@MiaFarrow) April 14, 2018
Milos the magnificent! čest k jeho památce (honour...
- 4/14/2018
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
Oscar-winning director Milos Forman — best known for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus” — passed away on Saturday at the age of 86, and the filmmaker was immediately championed on Twitter as the news spread.
Writer Larry Karaszewski, who worked with the director on “The People vs Larry Flynt,” said he will “miss his laughter.”...
Writer Larry Karaszewski, who worked with the director on “The People vs Larry Flynt,” said he will “miss his laughter.”...
- 4/14/2018
- by Sean Burch
- The Wrap
As the hoary old cliché goes, sometimes it’s about the journey, not the destination. This usually doesn’t apply to TV horror, which lives for the payoff; but Haunts of the Very Rich (1972) is not the usual. With this one, the payoff is all in the setup – and it’s delicious.
First airing on Wednesday, September 20th, 1972 as an ABC Movie of the Week (I know, they’re almost all ABC – what can I say? They ruled the horror roost), Haunts was up against The Carol Burnett Show/Medical Center on CBS and the NBC Mystery Movie. I’m sure a lot of folks were watching Carol, but if they scooched over to ABC they could watch Lloyd and Ed bicker in the underworld. Bridges and Asner that is – and yes, I said underworld.
Is that a spoiler? Only if you don’t watch past the first fifteen minutes.
First airing on Wednesday, September 20th, 1972 as an ABC Movie of the Week (I know, they’re almost all ABC – what can I say? They ruled the horror roost), Haunts was up against The Carol Burnett Show/Medical Center on CBS and the NBC Mystery Movie. I’m sure a lot of folks were watching Carol, but if they scooched over to ABC they could watch Lloyd and Ed bicker in the underworld. Bridges and Asner that is – and yes, I said underworld.
Is that a spoiler? Only if you don’t watch past the first fifteen minutes.
- 7/31/2016
- by Scott Drebit
- DailyDead
Savant UK correspondent Lee Broughton analyzes one of his favorite pictures starring Stacy Keach, who seemed to make only cult items in the '70s and '80s. William Peter Blatty dishes out a thick mix of comedy and dark soul-searching about the human condition as a Caligari- insane asylum, but with new twists. The Ninth Configuration Second Sight Region B Blu-ray 1980 / Colour / 2.35:1 enhanced widescreen / 118 m. / available through Amazon.uk Starring Stacy Keach, Scott Wilson, Jason Miller, Ed Flanders, Neville Brand, George Dicenzo, Moses Gunn, Robert Loggia, Joe Spinell, Tom Atkins. Cinematography Gerry Fisher Production Design William Malley Film Editors Peter Taylor, T. Battle Davis, Roberto Silvi, Peter Lee-Thompson Original Music Barry DeVorzon Written, Produced and Directed by William Peter Blatty from his novel
Reviewed by Lee Broughton
(Note: Savant reviews as a guest at Tfh. Here I stretch my prerogatives by presenting a review from Lee Broughton, a valued U.
Reviewed by Lee Broughton
(Note: Savant reviews as a guest at Tfh. Here I stretch my prerogatives by presenting a review from Lee Broughton, a valued U.
- 6/26/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Even as a new version of the classic mini-series is in the works, Warner Bros. is aiming to please fans by bringing the entire original series of Roots to the high definition format with a slew of bonus features. Come inside to learn more!
If you're a fan of the original Roots series, or weren't old enough to remember the iconic mini-series, then you're in luck. Today WB has announced a new blu-ray set to bring the entire series to blu-ray with loads of special features that dive into the heart of the story on June 7, 2016. All the details are below:
The groundbreaking, acclaimed television miniseries that captivated the entire nation and won multiple awards, Roots, will be released on Blu-ray™ for the first time, by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (Wbhe) on June 7, 2016. The legendary family saga, which follows the inspiring story of Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton, Transformers: Rescue Bots,...
If you're a fan of the original Roots series, or weren't old enough to remember the iconic mini-series, then you're in luck. Today WB has announced a new blu-ray set to bring the entire series to blu-ray with loads of special features that dive into the heart of the story on June 7, 2016. All the details are below:
The groundbreaking, acclaimed television miniseries that captivated the entire nation and won multiple awards, Roots, will be released on Blu-ray™ for the first time, by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (Wbhe) on June 7, 2016. The legendary family saga, which follows the inspiring story of Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton, Transformers: Rescue Bots,...
- 3/1/2016
- by feeds@cinelinx.com (Jordan Maison)
- Cinelinx
A few nights ago, Warner Bros. hosted a very canny event that our own Louis Virtel attended at the Playboy Mansion, a screening of "Entourage" that may have felt like virtual reality for those who attended. While I doubt being surrounded by scantily clad bunnies influenced Louis one way or another on the film, it's likely you'll see a number of reviews that are perhaps more enthusiastic than they would otherwise be, and it'd be hard to blame anyone who fell for it. One of the reasons the setting seemed so right for that particular film is because much of the charge of "Entourage" is watching the core ensemble swagger their way through Hollywood, doing whatever they want and rarely if ever facing any consequences as a result. It's always presented with a wink and a smile, just a case of boys being boys. We live in a world right...
- 5/24/2015
- by Drew McWeeny
- Hitfix
Stars: James Caan, John Houseman, Maud Adams, John Beck, Moses Gunn, Pamela Hensley, Barbara Trentham, John Normington, Shane Rimmer, Burt Kwouk | Written by William Harrison | Directed by Norman Jewison
We live in an age where remakes take movies from the past and look to modernise them, sometimes changing them completely. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it ends up in a complete shambles, dumbing down what the original stood for and losing the whole point of what they were trying to replicate. This is the case with Rollerball, a cult classic which suffered the bad remake treatment. Thankfully in this review though I’m looking at the original film which is being released by Arrow Video on Blu-ray, so from this point on we can forget the remake even existed.
In a future controlled by corporations war is a thing of the past and the only conflict is Rollerball. Jonathan E.
We live in an age where remakes take movies from the past and look to modernise them, sometimes changing them completely. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it ends up in a complete shambles, dumbing down what the original stood for and losing the whole point of what they were trying to replicate. This is the case with Rollerball, a cult classic which suffered the bad remake treatment. Thankfully in this review though I’m looking at the original film which is being released by Arrow Video on Blu-ray, so from this point on we can forget the remake even existed.
In a future controlled by corporations war is a thing of the past and the only conflict is Rollerball. Jonathan E.
- 3/21/2015
- by Paul Metcalf
- Nerdly
Teresa Wright and Matt Damon in 'The Rainmaker' Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright vs. Samuel Goldwyn: Nasty Falling Out.") "I'd rather have luck than brains!" Teresa Wright was quoted as saying in the early 1950s. That's understandable, considering her post-Samuel Goldwyn choice of movie roles, some of which may have seemed promising on paper.[1] Wright was Marlon Brando's first Hollywood leading lady, but that didn't help her to bounce back following the very public spat with her former boss. After all, The Men was released before Elia Kazan's film version of A Streetcar Named Desire turned Brando into a major international star. Chances are that good film offers were scarce. After Wright's brief 1950 comeback, for the third time in less than a decade she would be gone from the big screen for more than a year.
- 3/11/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The main problem I have with the term ‘Blaxploitation’ film is that it’s used as a lazy and convenient handle that doesn’t adequately express the range of black films that came out during the early to mid 70’s - as if all of them were cheap action movies. The reality is that, they were quite diverse - ranging from action to horror to dramas to westerns and even comedies, many of them forgotten over the decades. One of them was the 1974 United Artists film, "Amazing Grace," directed by Stan Lathan, with Moses Gunn and Rosalind Cash, but is notable for being the only lead film role for legendary comedian Moms Mabley. The subject of Whoopi Goldberg’s...
- 1/15/2015
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Nov. 4, 2014
Price: Blu-ray/DVD $29.95
Studio: Hen’s Tooth
The 1980 comedy-thriller cult favorite The Ninth Configuration is written and directed by William Peter Blatty, the author of The Exorcist.
Stacy Keach in The Ninth Configuration
It’s the final days of the Vietnam War and the Department of Defense has set up a mental hospital for soldiers in a remote castle. To all appearances, the patients are running the asylum. But nothing here is quite what it seems. A new psychiatrist (Stacy Keach, The Long Riders) arrives, assigned to determine if any of the vets are faking mental illness. Of particular interest to him is a distraught Nasa astronaut (Scott Wilson) who aborted his mission during the final countdown.
Also featuring Jason Miller (The Exorcist), Neville Brand (TV’s Laredo), Moses Gunn (Rollerball) and Robert Loggia (Scarface) in its cast, The Ninth Configuration suspensefully (and, at times,...
Price: Blu-ray/DVD $29.95
Studio: Hen’s Tooth
The 1980 comedy-thriller cult favorite The Ninth Configuration is written and directed by William Peter Blatty, the author of The Exorcist.
Stacy Keach in The Ninth Configuration
It’s the final days of the Vietnam War and the Department of Defense has set up a mental hospital for soldiers in a remote castle. To all appearances, the patients are running the asylum. But nothing here is quite what it seems. A new psychiatrist (Stacy Keach, The Long Riders) arrives, assigned to determine if any of the vets are faking mental illness. Of particular interest to him is a distraught Nasa astronaut (Scott Wilson) who aborted his mission during the final countdown.
Also featuring Jason Miller (The Exorcist), Neville Brand (TV’s Laredo), Moses Gunn (Rollerball) and Robert Loggia (Scarface) in its cast, The Ninth Configuration suspensefully (and, at times,...
- 9/10/2014
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Before A&E's Bates Motel - a contemporary take on the life of Norman Bates and his relationship with his mother, Norma - there was a made-for-television movie in 1987 called Bates Motel. Written and directed by Richard Rothstein and starred Bud Cort, Lori Petty, Moses Gunn, Gregg Henry and even Jason Bateman. If you recall, this take didn't focus on Norman Bates so much as it introduced us to his roomie from the mental hospital! The '87 Bates Motel was meant to be a television pilot, but a series never quite took off.
The post Original Bates Motel Will Be Included in a Psycho Four-Pack appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.
The post Original Bates Motel Will Be Included in a Psycho Four-Pack appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.
- 6/26/2014
- by Ryan Turek
- shocktillyoudrop.com
Blu-ray Release Date: May 13, 2014
Price: Blu-ray $29.95
Studio: Twilight Time
The 1975 sci-fi-tinged action-sports film Rollerball, one of the Seventies great dystopian future-shock flicks, finally makes its Blu-ray debut courtesy of Twilight Time.
In the future, there will be no war. But there will be Rollerball.
Rollerball posits a future—in this case a not-so-far-away 2018—in which war has been replaced by the titular game, a gladiatorial spectacle of violence that helps keep the global populace entertained and anesthetized. Emerging from this hard-hitting “sport” is a champion, Jonathan E (James Caan, Thief), whose individual expertise defeats the worldwide corporate leadership’s design: to emphasize the futility of individual effort. Corporate big-wigs (icily incarnated by The Fog‘s John Houseman) need Jonathan to retire, but Jonathan begins to have his own dangerous ideas.
Directed by Norman Jewison (Fiddler on the Roof) and written by William Harrison, the film also stars Moses Gunn (Wusa...
Price: Blu-ray $29.95
Studio: Twilight Time
The 1975 sci-fi-tinged action-sports film Rollerball, one of the Seventies great dystopian future-shock flicks, finally makes its Blu-ray debut courtesy of Twilight Time.
In the future, there will be no war. But there will be Rollerball.
Rollerball posits a future—in this case a not-so-far-away 2018—in which war has been replaced by the titular game, a gladiatorial spectacle of violence that helps keep the global populace entertained and anesthetized. Emerging from this hard-hitting “sport” is a champion, Jonathan E (James Caan, Thief), whose individual expertise defeats the worldwide corporate leadership’s design: to emphasize the futility of individual effort. Corporate big-wigs (icily incarnated by The Fog‘s John Houseman) need Jonathan to retire, but Jonathan begins to have his own dangerous ideas.
Directed by Norman Jewison (Fiddler on the Roof) and written by William Harrison, the film also stars Moses Gunn (Wusa...
- 4/18/2014
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Before "Bates Motel" opened up its doors on A&E, there was another television pilot of the same name that continued the Psycho legacy in an altogether different direction. That's right, kids, the failed 1987 pilot "Bates Motel" is now available on DVD!
Through the magic of Universal's Vault Series, you can order yourself a copy on DVD-r! Note that not all players will play these manufactured-on-demand discs so make sure that yours does before purchasing!
Now then... what the hell is this, you ask? I'll let our resident Psycho junkie, Jinx, take it from here with an excerpt from his 5-part series, Psycho Path: Tracing Norman Bates' Twisted Trail Through Page and Screen.
Bud Cort, Lori Petty, and Moses Gunn star in Richard Rothstein's 90-minute pilot. Let your curiosity get the better of you and order one below. It'll look great right next to your Psycho IV: The Beginning DVD!
Through the magic of Universal's Vault Series, you can order yourself a copy on DVD-r! Note that not all players will play these manufactured-on-demand discs so make sure that yours does before purchasing!
Now then... what the hell is this, you ask? I'll let our resident Psycho junkie, Jinx, take it from here with an excerpt from his 5-part series, Psycho Path: Tracing Norman Bates' Twisted Trail Through Page and Screen.
Bud Cort, Lori Petty, and Moses Gunn star in Richard Rothstein's 90-minute pilot. Let your curiosity get the better of you and order one below. It'll look great right next to your Psycho IV: The Beginning DVD!
- 10/10/2013
- by Uncle Creepy
- DreadCentral.com
Blu-ray Release Date: July 23, 2013
Price: Blu-ray $24.95
Studio: Olive Films
Paul Newman takes to the airwaves in Wusa.
Paul Newman (Hud), Joanne Woodward (The Three Faces of Eve), Anthony Perkins (Psycho) and Pat Hingle (Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby) star in the 1970 drama Wusa.
The film concerns a jaded disc-jockey (Newman) who offers his services to Wusa, a conservative, hate-stirring station out of New Orleans. While struggling with his own apathy, the deejay begins spreading hateful messages perpetrated by the owner of the station (Hingle), which leads to some pretty ugly goings-on.
Directed by Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke) and based on Robert Stone’s best-selling novel A Hall of Mirrors , Wusa also stars Laurence Harvey (1962′s The Manchurian Candidate), Don Gordon (Bullitt), Cloris Leachman (The Women), Moses Gunn (The Neverending Story) and Wayne Rogers (TV’s M*A*S*H).
Wusa was released by on DVD by Olive...
Price: Blu-ray $24.95
Studio: Olive Films
Paul Newman takes to the airwaves in Wusa.
Paul Newman (Hud), Joanne Woodward (The Three Faces of Eve), Anthony Perkins (Psycho) and Pat Hingle (Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby) star in the 1970 drama Wusa.
The film concerns a jaded disc-jockey (Newman) who offers his services to Wusa, a conservative, hate-stirring station out of New Orleans. While struggling with his own apathy, the deejay begins spreading hateful messages perpetrated by the owner of the station (Hingle), which leads to some pretty ugly goings-on.
Directed by Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke) and based on Robert Stone’s best-selling novel A Hall of Mirrors , Wusa also stars Laurence Harvey (1962′s The Manchurian Candidate), Don Gordon (Bullitt), Cloris Leachman (The Women), Moses Gunn (The Neverending Story) and Wayne Rogers (TV’s M*A*S*H).
Wusa was released by on DVD by Olive...
- 5/22/2013
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
When Homicide: Life on the Street premiered in January 1993 after the Super Bowl, it leaped into a different world than the standard hour-long dramas. There were a few exceptions like Hill Street Blues that provided an inspiration, but Creators Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana were entering uncharted territory. The cast lacks the typical pretty faces and mirrors the balding and overweight guys you might expect to see as homicide detectives. This is a show about “thinking cops” who use their wits instead of muscle to catch the bad guys. Setting up a formula with no shootouts or car chases, Levinson and Fontana changed the game for cop shows and network dramas in general. While the dwindling ratings pushed the series towards cancellation many times, it actually survived for seven seasons. The viewership never matched those of a breakout hit like NYPD Blue, but its impact on the television landscape was a lot more significant.
- 3/11/2013
- by Dan Heaton
- SoundOnSight
Review by Dane Marti
This film rocked my Rock and Roll World. How’s that for an obnoxious way to open a serious film review? I don’t care if I sound juvenile. As I write this, I am listening to Led Zeppelin, to be followed by The Stooges first album.
Anyway, this movie put me in a damn good mood. Of course, having spent years in the local music scene, hanging out with friends dedicated to the lovely pursuit of vinyl acquisition, I was definitely interested in the film, an obsessive and positive interest that would compel many of my generation to enjoy the movie. I collect old records, and I know this unique and obsessive world. Fuzz Track City rings true.
The main character – a Detective named Murphy Dunn (seems stuck in the past. Trapped in a lava light – .no, trapped in a bad 70′s cop show. He...
This film rocked my Rock and Roll World. How’s that for an obnoxious way to open a serious film review? I don’t care if I sound juvenile. As I write this, I am listening to Led Zeppelin, to be followed by The Stooges first album.
Anyway, this movie put me in a damn good mood. Of course, having spent years in the local music scene, hanging out with friends dedicated to the lovely pursuit of vinyl acquisition, I was definitely interested in the film, an obsessive and positive interest that would compel many of my generation to enjoy the movie. I collect old records, and I know this unique and obsessive world. Fuzz Track City rings true.
The main character – a Detective named Murphy Dunn (seems stuck in the past. Trapped in a lava light – .no, trapped in a bad 70′s cop show. He...
- 12/14/2012
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
by Nick Schager
[This week's "Retro Active" pick is inspired by the Nicolas Cage thief thriller Stolen.]
Robbery is fun and games in The Hot Rock, and dramatized with suave grace by Peter Yates, who directs this adaptation of Donald E. Westlake's novel with an assuredness that enhances its funny-ha-ha hijinks. Yates' use of widescreen alternates between workmanlike efficiency and subtle artistry, highlighting interpersonal dynamics, enhancing suspense and creating tension through his deft alternation between close-ups and expansive master shots that position his protagonists as clownish mice attempting to navigate an enormous maze. That last impression is furthered by Yates' understated interplay between foreground-background images and diagonal visual lines—an early shot of Robert Redford walking away from George Segal alongside a park bench; another of Redford and Segal on a grassy path that stretches first toward, and then away from, the screen—that enhance the sense of characters attempting to operate in an inherently cockeyed world. Certainly, it's a world that provides no clear paths to success,...
[This week's "Retro Active" pick is inspired by the Nicolas Cage thief thriller Stolen.]
Robbery is fun and games in The Hot Rock, and dramatized with suave grace by Peter Yates, who directs this adaptation of Donald E. Westlake's novel with an assuredness that enhances its funny-ha-ha hijinks. Yates' use of widescreen alternates between workmanlike efficiency and subtle artistry, highlighting interpersonal dynamics, enhancing suspense and creating tension through his deft alternation between close-ups and expansive master shots that position his protagonists as clownish mice attempting to navigate an enormous maze. That last impression is furthered by Yates' understated interplay between foreground-background images and diagonal visual lines—an early shot of Robert Redford walking away from George Segal alongside a park bench; another of Redford and Segal on a grassy path that stretches first toward, and then away from, the screen—that enhance the sense of characters attempting to operate in an inherently cockeyed world. Certainly, it's a world that provides no clear paths to success,...
- 9/16/2012
- GreenCine Daily
Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev Andrei Tarkovsky, Audrey Hepburn, Clara Bow Movies: Packard Campus May 2012 Schedule Friday, April 27 (7:30 p.m.) Solaris (Magna, 1972) An alien intelligence infiltrates a space mission. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. With Natalya Bondarchuk and Donatas Banionis. Sci-fi psychological drama. Black & White and color, 167 min. In Russian and German with English subtitles. Saturday, April 28 (7:30 p.m.) To Kill A Mockingbird (Universal, 1962) A Southern lawyer defends a black man wrongly accused of rape, and tries to explain the proceedings to his children. Directed by Robert Mulligan. With Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, Brock Peters and Robert Duvall. Drama. Black & white, 129 min. Selected for the National Film Registry in 1995. Thursday, May 3 (7:30 p.m.) The Little Giant (Warner Bros., 1933) A Chicago beer magnate about to lose his business with the repeal of Prohibition, moves to California and tries to join society's upper crust, but his gangster origins prove tough to shake.
- 4/21/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
As happened for so many other genres, the 1960s/1970s saw a tremendous creative expansion in crime and cop thrillers. The old Hollywood moguls had died off or retired, most of the major studios were bleeding red ink, attendance had gone off a cliff since the end of Ww II, and a new breed of young, creatively adventurous production executives had been tasked with trying to save their business by coming up with movies which could hook a new, young, cinema-literate audience.
It also happened to be one of the most socially turbulent times in American history. Even before the American public grew restive over the growing disaster in Vietnam, the social fabric was unraveling with self-examination and doubt. The Cold War; a certain inner emptiness that went with a period of great material prosperity; once invisible fault lines on matters of race and gender discrimination beginning to crack – all...
It also happened to be one of the most socially turbulent times in American history. Even before the American public grew restive over the growing disaster in Vietnam, the social fabric was unraveling with self-examination and doubt. The Cold War; a certain inner emptiness that went with a period of great material prosperity; once invisible fault lines on matters of race and gender discrimination beginning to crack – all...
- 3/22/2012
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
What better way to celebrate Black History Month than takein some vintage films about the black experience?
The folks behind the St. Louis Black Film Festival Presents a Classic Black Film Festival for Black History Month at Landmark’s Tivoli Theater (6350 Delmar in St. Louis. Loop) each Thursday in February. Last year the St. Louis Black Film Festival presented a series of new films by black filmmakers, but this year are going back into the vaults and digging out some vintage cinema for audiences with an interest in black history to enjoy on the big screen.
The event kicks off tonight, February 2nd, at the Tivoli Theater at 5pm with the 1943 classic Stormy Weather, about the relationship between an aspiring dancer (Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson) and a popular songstress (Lena Horne). Robinson was the world’s preeminent tap dancer of his day, and is remembered for his appearances with Shirley Temple...
The folks behind the St. Louis Black Film Festival Presents a Classic Black Film Festival for Black History Month at Landmark’s Tivoli Theater (6350 Delmar in St. Louis. Loop) each Thursday in February. Last year the St. Louis Black Film Festival presented a series of new films by black filmmakers, but this year are going back into the vaults and digging out some vintage cinema for audiences with an interest in black history to enjoy on the big screen.
The event kicks off tonight, February 2nd, at the Tivoli Theater at 5pm with the 1943 classic Stormy Weather, about the relationship between an aspiring dancer (Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson) and a popular songstress (Lena Horne). Robinson was the world’s preeminent tap dancer of his day, and is remembered for his appearances with Shirley Temple...
- 2/2/2012
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
The Associated Press reported Monday that British director Peter Yates died over the weekend of an illness at the age of 81. As The AP reports, Yates had a unique career path:
"Born in Aldershot, southern England in 1929, Yates trained as an actor, performed in repertory theater and did a stint as a race-car driver before moving into film, first as an editor and then as an assistant director on films including Tony Richardson's 'A Taste of Honey' and J. Lee Thompson's 'The Guns of Navarone.'"
Yates had a long and, at times, not-quite-illustrious career: his filmography includes the fantasy cheesefest "Krull" and the underwater cheesecakefest "The Deep", a "Jaws" knockoff that became a hit mostly because Jacqueline Bisset spent a good portion of the movie in a wet t-shirt. But a couple of duds don't tarnish an impressive legacy, including at least three films that,...
"Born in Aldershot, southern England in 1929, Yates trained as an actor, performed in repertory theater and did a stint as a race-car driver before moving into film, first as an editor and then as an assistant director on films including Tony Richardson's 'A Taste of Honey' and J. Lee Thompson's 'The Guns of Navarone.'"
Yates had a long and, at times, not-quite-illustrious career: his filmography includes the fantasy cheesefest "Krull" and the underwater cheesecakefest "The Deep", a "Jaws" knockoff that became a hit mostly because Jacqueline Bisset spent a good portion of the movie in a wet t-shirt. But a couple of duds don't tarnish an impressive legacy, including at least three films that,...
- 1/12/2011
- by Matt Singer
- ifc.com
Chicago – I think it’s funny that so many parents commented on “Where the Wild Things Are” being too dark and scary. Clearly, they didn’t grow up in the same era of ’70s and ’80s fantasy films as I did when kid’s movies could be honestly terrifying. “The Dark Crystal,” “Labyrinth,” and, of course, “The Neverending Story” recognized that kids need a good cry and a true scare as much as they need to be entertained. Wolfgang Petersen’s excellent adaptation of the beloved book by Michael Ende was dark, complex, and riveting. It’s nice to own it on Blu-ray but it deserved a better release.
Blu-Ray Rating: 3.0/5.0
It seems likely that the HD version of “The Neverending Story” is timed by Warner Brothers to release on the same day as Spike Jonze’s masterful “Where the Wild Things Are” because they are both dark fantasy films...
Blu-Ray Rating: 3.0/5.0
It seems likely that the HD version of “The Neverending Story” is timed by Warner Brothers to release on the same day as Spike Jonze’s masterful “Where the Wild Things Are” because they are both dark fantasy films...
- 3/1/2010
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
"With all due respect to his excellence," says Douglas Turner Ward, "audiences think that black theatre is August Wilson. That irks me when people feel there is only one black view, one black style, one black spokesman. There is a breadth of black writing." Indeed, from the time Ward co-founded the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967, his mission has been to demonstrate how wide and varied that vision is. In its first 15 years, NEC produced such diverse playwrights as Lonnie Elder, Charles Fuller, and Leslie Lee; the company and its productions have won two Tony Awards and several Obies. To honor the company's contribution to American theatre, Off-Broadway's Signature Theatre Company is devoting its 2008-09 season to several of NEC's best-known works, including Lee's The First Breeze of Summer, Fuller's Zooman and the Sign, and Samm-Art Williams' Home. There will also be a staged reading of Ward's Day of Absence...
- 8/18/2008
- by Simi Horwitz
- backstage.com
This review was written for the theatrical release of "American Gangster".The title is catchy but misleading. Frank Lucas was less an "American Gangster" than an original Old Gangster in sable, a caricature in the tradition of '70s blaxploitation flicks.
He is in fact a real-life character, an apparently highly attractive person -- likable even -- who made millions by killing people and ruining lives with the powdered death of heroin. Going up against this all-powerful yet ghostly figure who operates outside the old Mafia networks, is Richie Roberts, an incorruptible cop from the street who is determined put him in prison. Director Ridley Scott takes on these familiar subjects, themes and characters with a keen eye for the social fabric, false assumptions, suffocating corruption and vivid personalities that make such a story worth retelling.
So this is a gangster movie focused on character rather than action and on the intricacies of people's backgrounds, strategies and motivations. Whether it means to, the film plays off a clutch of old movies, from "The Godfather" and "Serpico" to "Superfly" and "Shaft". But Scott and writer Steven Zaillian make certain their Old Gangster is original and true to himself and his times rather than a concoction of movie fiction. Consequently, the movie is smooth and smart enough to attract a significant audience beyond the considerable fan base of its stars, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.
You do sense in this movie that its principals are returning to safe harbor. After a discouraging foray into feeble comedy by Scott and Crowe ("A Good Year") and Gothic Southern melodrama for Zaillian ("All the King's Men"), these artists scramble back to an emotional naturalism more aligned to their sensibilities. Even for Washington, who seldom makes a false step careerwise, the film represents a welcome return to the larger-than-life villainy he performed so well in 2001's "Training Day".
Zaillian, working from Mark Jacobson's magazine portrait of Lucas -- a heroin kingpin of Harlem in the late '60s and early '70s -- sets two men on a collision course. Lucas (Washington), a country lad from North Carolina, is the nearly invisible driver and right-hand man to Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, the most famous of Harlem gangsters. (So famous that this is his fourth movie reincarnation. Moses Gunn played him in "Shaft", and Lawrence Fishburne twice in "The Cotton Club" and "Hoodlum".) When Bumpy dies in his arms, Frank moves into the vacuum caused by his death with ruthless guile and a friendly personality.
Meanwhile, Richie Roberts (Crowe), a street-smart drug cop in New Jersey, is Frank's opposite: He can't help alienating everyone who crosses his path. His wife wants a divorce, insisting he leads a life entirely unsuitable to the welfare of their only child. Fellow cops shun him from the moment he brings in nearly a million dollars of recovered drug money. No one can understand why he didn't keep it, which says a lot about the state of policing in the New York/New Jersey area in 1968.
Frank's stroke of genius in the drug trade is to cut out the middleman. He flies to Thailand, takes a boat up the river in the Golden Triangle, makes a deal with a Chinese general, then arranges through an in-law to ship the kilos to New York in military planes coming back from Vietnam. His heroin, branded Blue Magic, hits the street twice as good and half as much as the competition.
It is so pure that dead junkies turn up all over New York. The police are baffled but look in all the wrong places. It never occurs to them that a black man is behind the scheme. Richie, whose whacked-out partner is one of Blue Magic's victims, is given his own task force. He finally targets Frank, but no one will believe him.
Frank flies under the radar. He hires only relatives -- a veritable army of brothers like Huey Lucas (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as well as cousins -- whom he sets up with storefront businesses that function as drug-distribution centers. He maintains a low profile and adheres to a rigid code of conduct. His major weekly outings are to church with his mother (the inestimable Ruby Dee) or to his nightclub with wife Eva (Lymari Nadal), a former Miss Puerto Rico.
Richie's major opposition comes from within. New York's anti-drug task force, the Special Investigations Unit, is rife with corruption. As personified by Detective Trupo (a strutting Josh Brolin), the SIU takes its cut right off the top.
In a story that ranges from the jungles of Harlem and Thailand to North Carolina backwoods, Scott is both hurried and leisurely. He covers a lot of territory, often in low-light levels and with the Vietnam War playing on background TV sets, soaking up the sordid atmosphere, including naked, surgically masked women cutting the dope -- so no one will steal anything -- and celebrities like Joe Lewis cheerfully slumming with the gangsters. The scruffiness of Richie's world makes a brilliant contrast to Frank's penthouse. Yet both worlds teem with moral ambiguity.
If there are no false steps here, there are few highlights either. Such films as "The Godfather" and "Serpico" contain iconic scenes and sequences. "American Gangster" contributes little. It's workmanlike and engrossing, but what sticks in the mind are Frank and Richie, not what anybody does.
The film concocts a final sequence in which the two finally meet and do a deal, the deal that apparently sprung Frank from prison to enjoy his old age: Frank rats out the SIU cops who shook him down, resulting in most of the unit going to prison. Richie ends up leaving the force to become a lawyer and eventually represents Frank. So "American Gangster" finally shows its true colors: It's really a buddy movie.
AMERICAN GANGSTER
Universal
Imagine Entertainment presents a Relativity Media/Scott Free Prods. production
Credits:
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriter: Steven Zaillian
Based on an article by: Mark Jacobson
Producers: Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott
Executive producers: Nicholas Pileggi, Steven Zaillian, Branko Lustig, Jim Whitaker, Michael Costigan
Director of photography: Harris Savides
Production designer: Arthur Max
Music: Marc Streitenfeld
Costume designer: Janty Yates
Editor: Pietro Scalia
Cast:
Frank Lucas: Denzel Washington
Richie Roberts: Russell Crowe
Huey Lucas: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Detective Trupo: Josh Brolin
Eva: Lymari Nadal
Lou: Ted Levine
Nate: Roger Guenveur Smith
Freddie Spearman: John Hawkes
Moses Jones: RZA
Nickey Barnes: Cuba Gooding Jr.
Dominic: Armand Assante
Mama Lucas: Rudy Dee
Running time -- 157 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
He is in fact a real-life character, an apparently highly attractive person -- likable even -- who made millions by killing people and ruining lives with the powdered death of heroin. Going up against this all-powerful yet ghostly figure who operates outside the old Mafia networks, is Richie Roberts, an incorruptible cop from the street who is determined put him in prison. Director Ridley Scott takes on these familiar subjects, themes and characters with a keen eye for the social fabric, false assumptions, suffocating corruption and vivid personalities that make such a story worth retelling.
So this is a gangster movie focused on character rather than action and on the intricacies of people's backgrounds, strategies and motivations. Whether it means to, the film plays off a clutch of old movies, from "The Godfather" and "Serpico" to "Superfly" and "Shaft". But Scott and writer Steven Zaillian make certain their Old Gangster is original and true to himself and his times rather than a concoction of movie fiction. Consequently, the movie is smooth and smart enough to attract a significant audience beyond the considerable fan base of its stars, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.
You do sense in this movie that its principals are returning to safe harbor. After a discouraging foray into feeble comedy by Scott and Crowe ("A Good Year") and Gothic Southern melodrama for Zaillian ("All the King's Men"), these artists scramble back to an emotional naturalism more aligned to their sensibilities. Even for Washington, who seldom makes a false step careerwise, the film represents a welcome return to the larger-than-life villainy he performed so well in 2001's "Training Day".
Zaillian, working from Mark Jacobson's magazine portrait of Lucas -- a heroin kingpin of Harlem in the late '60s and early '70s -- sets two men on a collision course. Lucas (Washington), a country lad from North Carolina, is the nearly invisible driver and right-hand man to Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, the most famous of Harlem gangsters. (So famous that this is his fourth movie reincarnation. Moses Gunn played him in "Shaft", and Lawrence Fishburne twice in "The Cotton Club" and "Hoodlum".) When Bumpy dies in his arms, Frank moves into the vacuum caused by his death with ruthless guile and a friendly personality.
Meanwhile, Richie Roberts (Crowe), a street-smart drug cop in New Jersey, is Frank's opposite: He can't help alienating everyone who crosses his path. His wife wants a divorce, insisting he leads a life entirely unsuitable to the welfare of their only child. Fellow cops shun him from the moment he brings in nearly a million dollars of recovered drug money. No one can understand why he didn't keep it, which says a lot about the state of policing in the New York/New Jersey area in 1968.
Frank's stroke of genius in the drug trade is to cut out the middleman. He flies to Thailand, takes a boat up the river in the Golden Triangle, makes a deal with a Chinese general, then arranges through an in-law to ship the kilos to New York in military planes coming back from Vietnam. His heroin, branded Blue Magic, hits the street twice as good and half as much as the competition.
It is so pure that dead junkies turn up all over New York. The police are baffled but look in all the wrong places. It never occurs to them that a black man is behind the scheme. Richie, whose whacked-out partner is one of Blue Magic's victims, is given his own task force. He finally targets Frank, but no one will believe him.
Frank flies under the radar. He hires only relatives -- a veritable army of brothers like Huey Lucas (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as well as cousins -- whom he sets up with storefront businesses that function as drug-distribution centers. He maintains a low profile and adheres to a rigid code of conduct. His major weekly outings are to church with his mother (the inestimable Ruby Dee) or to his nightclub with wife Eva (Lymari Nadal), a former Miss Puerto Rico.
Richie's major opposition comes from within. New York's anti-drug task force, the Special Investigations Unit, is rife with corruption. As personified by Detective Trupo (a strutting Josh Brolin), the SIU takes its cut right off the top.
In a story that ranges from the jungles of Harlem and Thailand to North Carolina backwoods, Scott is both hurried and leisurely. He covers a lot of territory, often in low-light levels and with the Vietnam War playing on background TV sets, soaking up the sordid atmosphere, including naked, surgically masked women cutting the dope -- so no one will steal anything -- and celebrities like Joe Lewis cheerfully slumming with the gangsters. The scruffiness of Richie's world makes a brilliant contrast to Frank's penthouse. Yet both worlds teem with moral ambiguity.
If there are no false steps here, there are few highlights either. Such films as "The Godfather" and "Serpico" contain iconic scenes and sequences. "American Gangster" contributes little. It's workmanlike and engrossing, but what sticks in the mind are Frank and Richie, not what anybody does.
The film concocts a final sequence in which the two finally meet and do a deal, the deal that apparently sprung Frank from prison to enjoy his old age: Frank rats out the SIU cops who shook him down, resulting in most of the unit going to prison. Richie ends up leaving the force to become a lawyer and eventually represents Frank. So "American Gangster" finally shows its true colors: It's really a buddy movie.
AMERICAN GANGSTER
Universal
Imagine Entertainment presents a Relativity Media/Scott Free Prods. production
Credits:
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriter: Steven Zaillian
Based on an article by: Mark Jacobson
Producers: Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott
Executive producers: Nicholas Pileggi, Steven Zaillian, Branko Lustig, Jim Whitaker, Michael Costigan
Director of photography: Harris Savides
Production designer: Arthur Max
Music: Marc Streitenfeld
Costume designer: Janty Yates
Editor: Pietro Scalia
Cast:
Frank Lucas: Denzel Washington
Richie Roberts: Russell Crowe
Huey Lucas: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Detective Trupo: Josh Brolin
Eva: Lymari Nadal
Lou: Ted Levine
Nate: Roger Guenveur Smith
Freddie Spearman: John Hawkes
Moses Jones: RZA
Nickey Barnes: Cuba Gooding Jr.
Dominic: Armand Assante
Mama Lucas: Rudy Dee
Running time -- 157 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 10/22/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The title is catchy but misleading. Frank Lucas was less an American Gangster than an original Old Gangster in sable, a caricature in the tradition of '70s blaxploitation flicks.
He is in fact a real-life character, an apparently highly attractive person -- likable even -- who made millions by killing people and ruining lives with the powdered death of heroin. Going up against this all-powerful yet ghostly figure who operates outside the old Mafia networks, is Richie Roberts, an incorruptible cop from the street who is determined put him in prison. Director Ridley Scott takes on these familiar subjects, themes and characters with a keen eye for the social fabric, false assumptions, suffocating corruption and vivid personalities that make such a story worth retelling.
So this is a gangster movie focused on character rather than action and on the intricacies of people's backgrounds, strategies and motivations. Whether it means to, the film plays off a clutch of old movies, from The Godfather and Serpico to Superfly and Shaft. But Scott and writer Steven Zaillian make certain their Old Gangster is original and true to himself and his times rather than a concoction of movie fiction. Consequently, the movie is smooth and smart enough to attract a significant audience beyond the considerable fan base of its stars, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.
You do sense in this movie that its principals are returning to safe harbor. After a discouraging foray into feeble comedy by Scott and Crowe (A Good Year) and Gothic Southern melodrama for Zaillian ("All the King's Men"), these artists scramble back to an emotional naturalism more aligned to their sensibilities. Even for Washington, who seldom makes a false step careerwise, the film represents a welcome return to the larger-than-life villainy he performed so well in 2001's Training Day.
Zaillian, working from Mark Jacobson's magazine portrait of Lucas -- a heroin kingpin of Harlem in the late '60s and early '70s -- sets two men on a collision course. Lucas (Washington), a country lad from North Carolina, is the nearly invisible driver and right-hand man to Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson, the most famous of Harlem gangsters. (So famous that this is his fourth movie reincarnation. Moses Gunn played him in Shaft, and Lawrence Fishburne twice in The Cotton Club and Hoodlum.) When Bumpy dies in his arms, Frank moves into the vacuum caused by his death with ruthless guile and a friendly personality.
Meanwhile, Richie Roberts (Crowe), a street-smart drug cop in New Jersey, is Frank's opposite: He can't help alienating everyone who crosses his path. His wife wants a divorce, insisting he leads a life entirely unsuitable to the welfare of their only child. Fellow cops shun him from the moment he brings in nearly a million dollars of recovered drug money. No one can understand why he didn't keep it, which says a lot about the state of policing in the New York/New Jersey area in 1968.
Frank's stroke of genius in the drug trade is to cut out the middleman. He flies to Thailand, takes a boat up the river in the Golden Triangle, makes a deal with a Chinese general, then arranges through an in-law to ship the kilos to New York in military planes coming back from Vietnam. His heroin, branded Blue Magic, hits the street twice as good and half as much as the competition.
It is so pure that dead junkies turn up all over New York. The police are baffled but look in all the wrong places. It never occurs to them that a black man is behind the scheme. Richie, whose whacked-out partner is one of Blue Magic's victims, is given his own task force. He finally targets Frank, but no one will believe him.
Frank flies under the radar. He hires only relatives -- a veritable army of brothers like Huey Lucas (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as well as cousins -- whom he sets up with storefront businesses that function as drug-distribution centers. He maintains a low profile and adheres to a rigid code of conduct. His major weekly outings are to church with his mother (the inestimable Ruby Dee) or to his nightclub with wife Eva (Lymari Nadal), a former Miss Puerto Rico.
Richie's major opposition comes from within. New York's anti-drug task force, the Special Investigations Unit, is rife with corruption. As personified by Detective Trupo (a strutting Josh Brolin), the SIU takes its cut right off the top.
In a story that ranges from the jungles of Harlem and Thailand to North Carolina backwoods, Scott is both hurried and leisurely. He covers a lot of territory, often in low-light levels and with the Vietnam War playing on background TV sets, soaking up the sordid atmosphere, including naked, surgically masked women cutting the dope -- so no one will steal anything -- and celebrities like Joe Lewis cheerfully slumming with the gangsters. The scruffiness of Richie's world makes a brilliant contrast to Frank's penthouse. Yet both worlds teem with moral ambiguity.
If there are no false steps here, there are few highlights either. Such films as The Godfather and Serpico contain iconic scenes and sequences. American Gangster contributes little. It's workmanlike and engrossing, but what sticks in the mind are Frank and Richie, not what anybody does.
The film concocts a final sequence in which the two finally meet and do a deal, the deal that apparently sprung Frank from prison to enjoy his old age: Frank rats out the SIU cops who shook him down, resulting in most of the unit going to prison. Richie ends up leaving the force to become a lawyer and eventually represents Frank. So American Gangster finally shows its true colors: It's really a buddy movie.
AMERICAN GANGSTER
Universal
Imagine Entertainment presents a Relativity Media/Scott Free Prods. production
Credits:
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriter: Steven Zaillian
Based on an article by: Mark Jacobson
Producers: Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott
Executive producers: Nicholas Pileggi, Steven Zaillian, Branko Lustig, Jim Whitaker, Michael Costigan
Director of photography: Harris Savides
Production designer: Arthur Max
Music: Marc Streitenfeld
Costume designer: Janty Yates
Editor: Pietro Scalia
Cast:
Frank Lucas: Denzel Washington
Richie Roberts: Russell Crowe
Huey Lucas: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Detective Trupo: Josh Brolin
Eva: Lymari Nadal
Lou: Ted Levine
Nate: Roger Guenveur Smith
Freddie Spearman: John Hawkes
Moses Jones: RZA
Nickey Barnes: Cuba Gooding Jr.
Dominic: Armand Assante
Mama Lucas: Rudy Dee
Running time -- 157 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
He is in fact a real-life character, an apparently highly attractive person -- likable even -- who made millions by killing people and ruining lives with the powdered death of heroin. Going up against this all-powerful yet ghostly figure who operates outside the old Mafia networks, is Richie Roberts, an incorruptible cop from the street who is determined put him in prison. Director Ridley Scott takes on these familiar subjects, themes and characters with a keen eye for the social fabric, false assumptions, suffocating corruption and vivid personalities that make such a story worth retelling.
So this is a gangster movie focused on character rather than action and on the intricacies of people's backgrounds, strategies and motivations. Whether it means to, the film plays off a clutch of old movies, from The Godfather and Serpico to Superfly and Shaft. But Scott and writer Steven Zaillian make certain their Old Gangster is original and true to himself and his times rather than a concoction of movie fiction. Consequently, the movie is smooth and smart enough to attract a significant audience beyond the considerable fan base of its stars, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.
You do sense in this movie that its principals are returning to safe harbor. After a discouraging foray into feeble comedy by Scott and Crowe (A Good Year) and Gothic Southern melodrama for Zaillian ("All the King's Men"), these artists scramble back to an emotional naturalism more aligned to their sensibilities. Even for Washington, who seldom makes a false step careerwise, the film represents a welcome return to the larger-than-life villainy he performed so well in 2001's Training Day.
Zaillian, working from Mark Jacobson's magazine portrait of Lucas -- a heroin kingpin of Harlem in the late '60s and early '70s -- sets two men on a collision course. Lucas (Washington), a country lad from North Carolina, is the nearly invisible driver and right-hand man to Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson, the most famous of Harlem gangsters. (So famous that this is his fourth movie reincarnation. Moses Gunn played him in Shaft, and Lawrence Fishburne twice in The Cotton Club and Hoodlum.) When Bumpy dies in his arms, Frank moves into the vacuum caused by his death with ruthless guile and a friendly personality.
Meanwhile, Richie Roberts (Crowe), a street-smart drug cop in New Jersey, is Frank's opposite: He can't help alienating everyone who crosses his path. His wife wants a divorce, insisting he leads a life entirely unsuitable to the welfare of their only child. Fellow cops shun him from the moment he brings in nearly a million dollars of recovered drug money. No one can understand why he didn't keep it, which says a lot about the state of policing in the New York/New Jersey area in 1968.
Frank's stroke of genius in the drug trade is to cut out the middleman. He flies to Thailand, takes a boat up the river in the Golden Triangle, makes a deal with a Chinese general, then arranges through an in-law to ship the kilos to New York in military planes coming back from Vietnam. His heroin, branded Blue Magic, hits the street twice as good and half as much as the competition.
It is so pure that dead junkies turn up all over New York. The police are baffled but look in all the wrong places. It never occurs to them that a black man is behind the scheme. Richie, whose whacked-out partner is one of Blue Magic's victims, is given his own task force. He finally targets Frank, but no one will believe him.
Frank flies under the radar. He hires only relatives -- a veritable army of brothers like Huey Lucas (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as well as cousins -- whom he sets up with storefront businesses that function as drug-distribution centers. He maintains a low profile and adheres to a rigid code of conduct. His major weekly outings are to church with his mother (the inestimable Ruby Dee) or to his nightclub with wife Eva (Lymari Nadal), a former Miss Puerto Rico.
Richie's major opposition comes from within. New York's anti-drug task force, the Special Investigations Unit, is rife with corruption. As personified by Detective Trupo (a strutting Josh Brolin), the SIU takes its cut right off the top.
In a story that ranges from the jungles of Harlem and Thailand to North Carolina backwoods, Scott is both hurried and leisurely. He covers a lot of territory, often in low-light levels and with the Vietnam War playing on background TV sets, soaking up the sordid atmosphere, including naked, surgically masked women cutting the dope -- so no one will steal anything -- and celebrities like Joe Lewis cheerfully slumming with the gangsters. The scruffiness of Richie's world makes a brilliant contrast to Frank's penthouse. Yet both worlds teem with moral ambiguity.
If there are no false steps here, there are few highlights either. Such films as The Godfather and Serpico contain iconic scenes and sequences. American Gangster contributes little. It's workmanlike and engrossing, but what sticks in the mind are Frank and Richie, not what anybody does.
The film concocts a final sequence in which the two finally meet and do a deal, the deal that apparently sprung Frank from prison to enjoy his old age: Frank rats out the SIU cops who shook him down, resulting in most of the unit going to prison. Richie ends up leaving the force to become a lawyer and eventually represents Frank. So American Gangster finally shows its true colors: It's really a buddy movie.
AMERICAN GANGSTER
Universal
Imagine Entertainment presents a Relativity Media/Scott Free Prods. production
Credits:
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriter: Steven Zaillian
Based on an article by: Mark Jacobson
Producers: Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott
Executive producers: Nicholas Pileggi, Steven Zaillian, Branko Lustig, Jim Whitaker, Michael Costigan
Director of photography: Harris Savides
Production designer: Arthur Max
Music: Marc Streitenfeld
Costume designer: Janty Yates
Editor: Pietro Scalia
Cast:
Frank Lucas: Denzel Washington
Richie Roberts: Russell Crowe
Huey Lucas: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Detective Trupo: Josh Brolin
Eva: Lymari Nadal
Lou: Ted Levine
Nate: Roger Guenveur Smith
Freddie Spearman: John Hawkes
Moses Jones: RZA
Nickey Barnes: Cuba Gooding Jr.
Dominic: Armand Assante
Mama Lucas: Rudy Dee
Running time -- 157 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 10/22/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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