Wearyingly slack, aurally bedecked with bursts of heavenly choir, Obchod na korze provides a sentimental anecdote touching on the Holocaust. It was co-directed by Ján Kádar and Elmar Klos, the latter of whom, a Czech, allowed his partner free rein. Born in Budapest, Kádar spent the Second World War in a labor camp, losing both […]
Monthly Archives: October 2009
After enduring the punishing experience of his gorgeously photographed Komornik, I am not likely ever to try watching another film by Poland’s Feliks Falk. There’s one lovely scene where the cold-hearted debt collector, whose tireless job dedication triggers in others rage, hate, heartbreak, even suicide, comes across his first girlfriend, now married, and they go […]
Robert Wise made bad movies (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951, Somebody Up There Likes Me, 1956, The Sound of Music, 1965) and good ones (Executive Suite, 1954, I Want to Live!, 1958, The Sand Pebbles, 1966); but the one flat-out beauty that he made is his eerie, atmospheric, downbeat The Body Snatcher, from […]
Probably the film to see each Halloween, especially if one is in the mood for a lot of fun, a continual sprinkling of the macabre, and a few flourishes of real terror, Frank Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace was made in 1941 but was contractually not released until 1944, when the original Broadway run of […]
Robert Ryan gives a tremendous performance—perhaps his greatest—as Stoker Thompson, a 35-year-old palooka who, belatedly informed by his manager during a bout that gambler Little Boy expects him to take a dive, refuses the arrangement and knocks out his young opponent, who is being groomed for minor stardom, in The Set-Up, for which the director, […]
Dennis Grunes 