Phil Karlson’s The Scarface Mob was originally made as a two-part pilot for the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse anthology series before the 80-minute episodes were re-cut for theatrical release. Given the sterility of so much dramatic television in the 1950s, it’s hard to imagine Karlson—best known for hard-hitting noirs like Kansas City Confidential and The Phenix City Story—seeing the format as suitable for his style. But Desi Arnaz, a huge admirer of the latter film, promised Karlson no studio interference. And while The Scarface Mob’s story presents a clear battle between good and evil in the form of Eliot Ness (Robert Stack) and Al Capone’s (Neville Brand) Chicago bootlegging empire, Karlson’s gritty brutality finds its way on-screen as the film conflates the maniacal ruthlessness of both men’s actions.
Stack’s performance went a long way in cementing Ness’s legacy in the public imagination.
Stack’s performance went a long way in cementing Ness’s legacy in the public imagination.
- 4/12/2024
- by Derek Smith
- Slant Magazine
The news of Hou Hsiao-hsien's retirement from filmmaking due to his battle with dementia shocked the cinema world, which seems to have lost one of its definite auteurs. As a small tribute to his timeless work we present a list of all his movies, with the exception of the two omnibuses he participated in 2007 (To Each His Own Cinema) and 2011 (10+10) which we hope to review later on, along with his yet unfinished last movie, “Shulan River”. Without further ado, here is a rundown of his movies, in chronological order.
1. Cute Girl (1980)
You should not ignore the importance of “Cute Girl” when it comes to introducing audiences to the kind of approach, thematically and aesthetically, that Hou would develop further in his next projects. As author Philip Kemp rightfully points out in his essay on the filmmaker's early works, concepts such as the contrast between rural and urban Taiwan or traditional family values,...
1. Cute Girl (1980)
You should not ignore the importance of “Cute Girl” when it comes to introducing audiences to the kind of approach, thematically and aesthetically, that Hou would develop further in his next projects. As author Philip Kemp rightfully points out in his essay on the filmmaker's early works, concepts such as the contrast between rural and urban Taiwan or traditional family values,...
- 4/4/2024
- by AMP Group
- AsianMoviePulse
The title might give the game away a little, but that doesn’t lessen the impact of How to Create a Sex Scandal. The new Max docuseries, brisk, brief, and damning, makes a convincing case that an East Texas pedophilia case that sent seven people to prison was in fact a frame job, conceived of greed and a badly damaged moral compass, and still not entirely rectified. This is the kind of filmmaking that can affect actual change.
The directors, Julian P. Hobbs and Berndt Mader, build their case carefully,...
The directors, Julian P. Hobbs and Berndt Mader, build their case carefully,...
- 5/23/2023
- by Chris Vognar
- Rollingstone.com
As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.***"Like watching Shirley Temple pull the wings off a fly," was one critic's evocative summary of A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), Alexander Mackendrick's disturbingly faithful rendition of Richard Hughes' striking novel.The book had been a passion project of Mackendrick for years, and he'd tried unsuccessfully to set it up at Ealing, the little British studio which had launched his career, but the story, in which a crew of anachronistic Victorian pirates find themselves inadvertent abductors of a family of schoolchildren, was much too strange and upsetting for producer Michael Balcon. You see, the children utterly destroy the pirates. It was a variation on the theme of "lethal innocence...
- 10/29/2020
- MUBI
Dan Duryea and Peter Lorre in Black Angel (1946) will be available on Blu-ray January 28th From Arrow Academy
Elegantly directed by Hollywood veteran Roy William Neill (best known for his 11 Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone), Black Angel is an underappreciated film noir treasure, adapted from a novel by the acclaimed crime writer Cornell Woolrich (Phantom Lady).
When the beautiful singer Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling) is slain in her chic apartment, the men in her life become suspects. There is Martin Blair, her alcoholic musician ex-husband, nursing a broken heart; there is the shady nightclub owner Marko who has been sneaking around her place, and there is Kirk Bennett (John Phillips), the adulterer who found his mistress s dead body and fled the scene. When Bennett is convicted and sentenced to death, his long-suffering wife Catherine (June Vincent) joins forces with the heartbroken pianist Martin Blair to uncover the truth…...
Elegantly directed by Hollywood veteran Roy William Neill (best known for his 11 Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone), Black Angel is an underappreciated film noir treasure, adapted from a novel by the acclaimed crime writer Cornell Woolrich (Phantom Lady).
When the beautiful singer Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling) is slain in her chic apartment, the men in her life become suspects. There is Martin Blair, her alcoholic musician ex-husband, nursing a broken heart; there is the shady nightclub owner Marko who has been sneaking around her place, and there is Kirk Bennett (John Phillips), the adulterer who found his mistress s dead body and fled the scene. When Bennett is convicted and sentenced to death, his long-suffering wife Catherine (June Vincent) joins forces with the heartbroken pianist Martin Blair to uncover the truth…...
- 12/28/2019
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Great new for the many fans of Alec Guinness. The Prisoner (1955) will be available on Blu-ray From Arrow Academy March 12th!
Banned from the Cannes and Venice Films Festivals for being anti-Communist and excoriated elsewhere as pro-Soviet propaganda, Peter Glenville s The Prisoner stoked controversy at the time of its original release and remains a complex, challenging and multifaceted exploration of faith and power.
In an unnamed Eastern European capital, an iron-willed Cardinal is arrested by state police on charges of treason. Tasked with securing a confession from him by any means necessary is a former comrade-in-arms from the anti-Nazi resistance. Knowing the Cardinal will never fold under physical torture, the Interrogator instead sets out to destroy him mentally, breaking his spirit rather than his body.
Adapted by acclaimed playwright Bridget Boland (Gaslight) from her own stage-play and showcasing powerhouse performances by two actors at the height of their game,...
Banned from the Cannes and Venice Films Festivals for being anti-Communist and excoriated elsewhere as pro-Soviet propaganda, Peter Glenville s The Prisoner stoked controversy at the time of its original release and remains a complex, challenging and multifaceted exploration of faith and power.
In an unnamed Eastern European capital, an iron-willed Cardinal is arrested by state police on charges of treason. Tasked with securing a confession from him by any means necessary is a former comrade-in-arms from the anti-Nazi resistance. Knowing the Cardinal will never fold under physical torture, the Interrogator instead sets out to destroy him mentally, breaking his spirit rather than his body.
Adapted by acclaimed playwright Bridget Boland (Gaslight) from her own stage-play and showcasing powerhouse performances by two actors at the height of their game,...
- 2/28/2019
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
“Before #Metoo There Was…The Apartment”
By Raymond Benson
One wonders if Billy Wilder’s magnificent comedy-drama, The Apartment, could be made today in the age of #MeToo. Probably not, despite its brilliant script, exceptional cast and performances, perfect direction, and its positive message against sexual harassment in the workplace.
Even so, in some circles The Apartment was considered controversial upon its release in 1960. Hollis Alpert in the Saturday Review called it a “dirty fairy tale.” Then again, The Apartment was coming off the heels of the hugely successful and popular Some Like it Hot, which the more-Puritan side of America may have called illicit and tawdry, too. Or perhaps co-writer and director Wilder was simply good at telling grown-up tales for adults within the context of a rapidly-maturing culture that was on the verge of a decade known for its freedom of expression. The 1960s was an explosion in...
By Raymond Benson
One wonders if Billy Wilder’s magnificent comedy-drama, The Apartment, could be made today in the age of #MeToo. Probably not, despite its brilliant script, exceptional cast and performances, perfect direction, and its positive message against sexual harassment in the workplace.
Even so, in some circles The Apartment was considered controversial upon its release in 1960. Hollis Alpert in the Saturday Review called it a “dirty fairy tale.” Then again, The Apartment was coming off the heels of the hugely successful and popular Some Like it Hot, which the more-Puritan side of America may have called illicit and tawdry, too. Or perhaps co-writer and director Wilder was simply good at telling grown-up tales for adults within the context of a rapidly-maturing culture that was on the verge of a decade known for its freedom of expression. The 1960s was an explosion in...
- 12/12/2018
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
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