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Wings
: :Wings, the first movie to win an Academy Award for Best Picture and the only silent film to win, is still remarkably enjoyable to watch. The story is a fairly conventional one--two flyboys, both in love with the same girl, go off to fight World War I, and male bonding and heartbreak ensue. It's a perfectly serviceable plot, except for the key logical flaw that both young men have inexplicably fallen in love with the boring girl down the street and have somehow failed to notice that Clara Bow is the ...
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Heartbreak Ridge
: essential video:The controversial, Reagan-era invasion of Grenada by U.S. troops is, oddly enough, at the center of this initially interesting story of a seasoned Marine sergeant (Clint Eastwood) routinely insulted by younger officers for being a symbol of the war that America 'lost' in Vietnam. Looking for both a victory and a little redemption, Eastwood's character trains a squadron of scrappy pups and turns them into fighting grunts, just in time to follow White House orders and take the little island. Marsha Mason plays Eastwood's love interest, and Mario Van ...
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Island of Lost Souls
: :When you've got Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi, how can you go wrong? Shipwreck victim Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) is stranded on an island run by the mysterious Dr. Moreau (Laughton). Moreau is hospitable enough, but the jungle is full of menacing shapes--and what about those ominous references to the House of Pain? Parker gradually learns of Moreau's unholy experiments and worries that he'll never escape. Though it has aged a bit, Island of Lost Souls is surprisingly spine-tingling, particularly the horrifying climax. Light and shadows are used especially well--occasionally, Moreau speaks ...
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The Mountain
: :In these days when the natural wonders of the world can be so easily synthesized on film by computers, it's a little tough to look upon studio sets of mountain exteriors as anything but unsatisfactory. But that's the situation with Edward Dmytryk's 1956 drama The Mountain, starring Spencer Tracy as a retired mountain guide who accompanies his brash young brother (Robert Wagner) on the ascent of a rugged slope to the site of a plane crash. Essentially, Tracy goes along to keep his venal sibling from getting killed, but once at ...
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Hostile Guns
: :In these days when the natural wonders of the world can be so easily synthesized on film by computers, it's a little tough to look upon studio sets of mountain exteriors as anything but unsatisfactory. But that's the situation with Edward Dmytryk's 1956 drama The Mountain, starring Spencer Tracy as a retired mountain guide who accompanies his brash young brother (Robert Wagner) on the ascent of a rugged slope to the site of a plane crash. Essentially, Tracy goes along to keep his venal sibling from getting killed, but once at ...
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Marked for Death
: :The glowering brutality that is aikido headbanger Steven Seagal's substitute for a star persona at least gives us a rancid taste of authenticity in this cookie-cutter action picture. This glum lug seems to really enjoy hurting people; he snaps limbs and shatters noses with visible relish. Pitted against a crew of Jamaican gangsters who invade his (white ethnic) Chicago neighborhood and threaten his family, retired DEA agent John Hatcher sets out to solve the case with robotic efficiency, kicking butt in just about every scene. Not quite as pudgy in this ...
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The Virginian
: :The third of five screen versions of Owen Wister's novel and play The Virginian is the only one that merits classic status. It's not a masterpiece, mind you, and not a great Western. But it is a landmark in the genre for defining some archetypal characters and situations, and for certifying the stardom of a key Western icon, Gary Cooper. You could say this 1929 movie hasn't aged well: the pace is spavined, the dialogue groans like a rickety ladder, and Cooper's pancake makeup occasionally leaves him looking like an eye-batting ...
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Bounty Killer
: :The third of five screen versions of Owen Wister's novel and play The Virginian is the only one that merits classic status. It's not a masterpiece, mind you, and not a great Western. But it is a landmark in the genre for defining some archetypal characters and situations, and for certifying the stardom of a key Western icon, Gary Cooper. You could say this 1929 movie hasn't aged well: the pace is spavined, the dialogue groans like a rickety ladder, and Cooper's pancake makeup occasionally leaves him looking like an eye-batting ...
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Road to Nashville
: :A little strange but far from unpleasant, Road to Nashville is a glorified gimmick held together by a lengthy parade of country & western hitmakers from 1967. The story, such as it is, finds comic actor Doodles Weaver reprising his popular character, Colonel Beedlebaum, as a bumbling movie producer sent to Nashville in search of talent for a film. While the colonel roams cluelessly through recording studios and rehearsal sessions, we enjoy the smooth artistry of Marty Robbins ('Devil Woman'), the grit of a young, clean-shaven Waylon Jennings ('Anita'), the hillbilly ...
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Whale of a Tale
: :A little strange but far from unpleasant, Road to Nashville is a glorified gimmick held together by a lengthy parade of country & western hitmakers from 1967. The story, such as it is, finds comic actor Doodles Weaver reprising his popular character, Colonel Beedlebaum, as a bumbling movie producer sent to Nashville in search of talent for a film. While the colonel roams cluelessly through recording studios and rehearsal sessions, we enjoy the smooth artistry of Marty Robbins ('Devil Woman'), the grit of a young, clean-shaven Waylon Jennings ('Anita'), the hillbilly ...
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Diesel vehicles have nearly a 50-percent market share in Europe, thanks to tax incentives and diesel-friendly legislation across the EU. Diesels are so passé there that you can buy a BMW 730d and no one will think it odd that your luxury car burns oil. Pull up in a diesel 7-Series in America and people would leer at you like you've alighted from an amphibious vehicle reeking of saltwater and dead trout.
