"The Hustler" was Paul Newman's breakthrough film, a startling piece of lowlife lit built around the fictional pool-shark punk Fast Eddie Felson. George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason and Piper Laurie turned this 1961 drama into an actors showcase. All four were nominated for Oscars. Newman, it could be argued, didn't get his Oscar for his work in … [Read more...]
‘Something Wild’ crashes into Blu-ray
Time hasn't tamed "Something Wild." Jonathan Demme's red-hot-mama road movie returns on Blu-ray and DVD, all dolled up by the Criterion Collection. Unlike most hipster movies of the 1980s, "Something Wild" still hits on all of its cylinders: sex, violence and screwball madness. Very little feels dated, really: Credit Demme's … [Read more...]
Lumet & Chayefsky’s anti-social ‘Network’
"I think I'd like to be an angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisies of our time," fallen news anchor Howard Beale tells co-workers in the opening minutes of the media-bashing masterpiece "Network." Director Sidney Lumet and writer Paddy Chayefsky, equally mad as hell, used their black comedy about a raggedy fourth TV network to denounce the … [Read more...]
‘Topsy-Turvy’ while turning Japanese
Topsy-turvy turned into a downer. "Princess Ida" came up short on charm. And so Gilbert & Sullivan's partnership neared collapse. Such is the setup for Mike Leigh's "Topsy Turvy," the delightful 1999 biopic about the masters of comic opera and the making of their "The Mikado." The Criterion Collection has rereleased "Topsy-Turvy" on Blu-ray … [Read more...]
The case of Sherlock Holmes on Blu-ray
Many actors have tried, but none has surpassed Basil Rathbone's embodiment of Sherlock Holmes. The razor-sharp profile, hawk nose and cocaine eyes seem torn straight from the pages of Arthur Conan Doyle. This is, undeniably, one of the great pairings of actor and character in film history. Odd to think, then, that the first Holmes film with … [Read more...]
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