Peter Ustinov, directing from a spotty, foul-mouthed script by Stanford Whitmore, creates a Faustian fable that is sparked by two wonderful performances. Beau Bridges, performing harakiri on his clean-cut image, plays Billy Breedlove, a Texan redneck who, working as an attendant in a shady mental hospital run by Caligari’s descendant (Ustinov, as usual over-the-top), discovers […]
Daily Archives: November 15, 2009
Laslo Benedek, who in different films had once directed Fredric March, Marlon Brando, Yul Brynner and Frank Sinatra, got to direct two of the actors who made my list of the fifty best film actors of all time, Swedes Per Oscarsson and Max von Sydow, in a frightening, highly entertaining though formally messy thriller about […]
This Sunday morning, I find the following films to be the ten best of the 1970s, which I am giving in order of preference, beginning with my most favorite: 1. THE PASSENGER (Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy, France, Spain, 1975). Written by Mark Peploe, Peter Wollen and the director, Antonioni’s The Passenger, a baleful, delicately mournful mystery, […]
Written by Frank Wead and directed both beautifully and efficiently by John Ford, Air Mail revolves around the dangers to air-mail pilots flying out from a tiny snow-blown airport around Christmastime and the clash of personalities between straight-laced Mike Miller (Ralph Bellamy), who runs the airport, and pilot Duke Talbot (Pat O’Brien), who is a […]
Dennis Grunes 