Robert Ryan takes a shot at the role of Captain Nemo in this film that has an entirely original story from anything Jules Verne ever dreamed up for the legendary character.
The is an OK blend of fantasy and is basically aimed at children. The sets are rather interesting and the cast which includes Chuck Conners, Nanette Newman and Luciana Paluzzi seem game.
The film is a decent enough entertainment, not a spectacular fantasy film but not bad either.
A team of crooks get together to plan the robbery of a jewelry shop. With careful planning they pull off the robbery in a still pretty exciting extended heist sequence. After the robbery things start to fall apart for the gang. So goes the story of Rififi.
American director Jules Dassin blacklisted from Hollywood during the Communist Red Scares of the 1950's signed on. Working with a very tight budget, he managed to pull off a classic crime film. The film has a lot of on location scenes in the dead of winter in France which gives it a real documentary feel at times.
The actors picked were not exactly at the top of the heap when the film was cast, but they helped to lend a certain authenticity to the story.
An excellent film, written by Jules Dassin, Auguste Le Breton and Rene Wheeler. The running time is 115 minutes.
Just reading the plot synopsis for this film lets you know immediately that you are in for something very weird and special. A Hong Kong fantasy with action and humor.
Directed by the incomparable Tsui Hark. The film jumps from one outlandish scene to another. The special effects were contributed by a team of American technicians which included Robert Blalack who had received an Academy Award for special effects on Star Wars of all things.
This is an extremely influencial film in Asian cinema and was clearly a source of inspiration for John Carpenter's Big Trouble In Little China.
Written by Shui Chung-yuet and Sze-to Cheuk-hon, running time 98 insane minutes.
A very good animated film from the Walt Disney Company.
In this film the animators and artists simplified their approach to the story. They were clearly influenced by the work that UPA was doing with their animated product.
The result was one or Disney's least overstuffed films. Gone were the elaborate settings of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. The film is definitely all the better for it. This is a simple story told clearly and effectively.
The film is so good that Disney paid it the ultimate compliment, remaking it as a live action film.
The writer was Bill Peet, the running time is 79 minutes.
A good film about the US Government's fight to bring down a very tough Mexican drug cartel. Emily Blunt plays the tough but rather clueless FBI agent assigned to a team of rule breaking cops who include Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro. Needless to say she is in for a very rude awakening about how things run in a crime infested border town.
The film is well directed and photographed. The story is interesting and the acting is at a very high caliber for this kind of film.
Taylor Sheridan , a good writer for this type of genre film did the screenplay, the running time is 121 minutes.
Macho director/writer John Milius persuaded American International Pictures to let him direct his script on the life of gangster John Dillinger. AIP President Samuel Arkoff agreed and result was Milius's first film.
The film has a very good cast, Warren Oats, Ben Johnson, Michelle Phillips, Cloris Leachman, Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Dreyfuss. Dillinger was filmed in Oklahoma but sort of has that AIP low budget look to it.
Milius had commented that his version of the John Dillinger story more closely followed the facts of his life. But this was probably typical hyperbole by the overly macho director.
The film is like an odd mixture of a John Ford film celebrating traditional values of American life and a gangster film with lots of shooting. Milius, a gun nut seems to enjoy staging scenes of houses and people getting riddled with machine gun fire.
In the end the film is just as big a fantasy as about every other gangster film.
Running time, 107 minutes.
The big selling point in this film were Joan Collin's sexy striptease dance numbers. There's actually only two of them but they are pretty hot. Once you get past this you get a pretty good crime caper film.
Edward G. Robinson is the mastermind behind the robbery of a casino in France. Rod Steiger is his right hand. Joan Collins, Eli Wallach and the rest of his assembled group are the remaining thieves which gets you up to the number 7. The film was well made by tough guy director Henry Hathaway and the script is by a good crime writer Sydney Boehm who wrote the classic The Big Heat.
The acting is uniformly excellent and it's very unusual to see Rod Steiger as the romantic leading man.
102 minutes.
Carroll Ballard, a first class filmmaker tells the story of competitive sailing in this case the battle for the America's Cup between the United States and Australia. That Ballard could make such a good film out of this material is a tribute to his skill as a director.
Still the sailing sequences are very exciting and the film is very well photographer by John Toll. It's worth a look for the sailing sequences alone.
The film was written by Mac Gudgeon and Rudy Wurlitizer. The running time is 126 minutes.
Daryl F Zanuck the head of 20th Century Fox at times personally produced some films. Jesse James is one of these. Zanuck's top screenwriter Nunnally Johnson wrote the film and one of the best studio directors, Henry King filmed it. Jesse James starred Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda, was photographed in Technicolor. It couldn't miss and didn't, it was a big hit with the audiences.
The film itself, as they say must have involved considerable research to get most of the facts of Jesse James's life wrong. The outlaw is portrayed at a simple man driven to violence by a cold corporate rail road company bent on taking over the farms of the regular people for the purposes of building their evil train line.
Anyway, the film is entertaining. A lot of it was shot on location in Missouri and the early 1930's Technicolor is nice to look at.
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