The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963) ***
Effortless stuff from Peter Sellers – funny accents and all – that put into sharp perspective his later strained performances in vehicles like What’s New Pussycat (1965) coupled with one of those delicious tales replete with countless twists that sets bad guy against bad guy. An on-from Sellers dominates any picture and here he’s at…
Three Days of the Condor (1975) *****
My belated tribute to the recently-deceased Robert Redford. He’s made a bunch of worthier films and his pair with Paul Newman – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973) – take some beating. But this is the one I go back to the most because it combines worthiness with thrills and…
Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) ****
Otto Preminger (Hurry Sundown, 1967) returns to his film noir roots (Laura, 1944; Whirlpool, 1950) for this crisply-told tale, mixing police procedural with psycho-drama, of a missing child who may the figment of her mother’s imagination. It’s beautifully filmed and for anyone brought up on modern cinema of short takes and the camera bouncing from…
Shark! / Man-Eater (1969) ***
The one where Burt Reynolds suddenly alights on his screen persona. At the outset he’s just another B-picture dude hoping to get by on macho posturing. Then, as though his brain has sparked into silver screen intelligence, the cocky grin appears. And we’re off. If any director was skewered by his insistence on retaining his…
The Magic Christian (1969) ***
Substitute contemporary artwork/installation/performance art for practical joke and this will come up trumps. Taken in the artistic sense, where artists are pillorying society, there are gems – a stage Hamlet performing a striptease, feeding scraps of money to the ducks, ship passengers experiencing an apparent voyage when the vessel hasn’t left land, cutting up a…
Night Moves (1975) **** – Seen at the Cinema
You want to know what screenplays are all about, it’s rarely dialog. It’s something registering the eyes. It’s very rare for a movie’s tone to change in a heartbeat. Or in this case in the blink of an eye. Planning to surprise his wife Ellen (Susan Clark) coming out of a movie theater, private eye…
Town Without Pity (1961) ****
Long-forgotten courtroom picture that deserves urgent reassessment in the wake of Jeffrey Epstein and especially the casual destruction of Virginia Giuffre. We’re so accustomed to attorneys being shown in a good light – defense lawyers rescuing the innocent, prosecutors putting away the evasive guilty – that we forgot just how brutal a trial is for…
Lost Alistair MacLean Screenplay Found, I Go Viral
I’m taking a day off. Someone else is doing the writing. Turns out I was sitting on a scoop, a major story of considerable interest. I was interviewed a week or so ago by the Daily Mail, Britain’s biggest daily newspaper with a massive online audience. The result made headlines in the paper as it…
Update: “Zulu Dawn” (1979) Back in Cinemas.
I’m delighted to announce that Munro Films has reissued Zulu Dawn on the big screen in a stunning 4K restoration. Dates for UK showings you can find here: https://www.munrofilmservices.co.uk/movie/zulu-dawn Check out my review here:
Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) ****
I’m still trying to work out why I enjoyed the Rat Pack’s last hurrah so much. Sure, it’s the knockout debut of “My Kind of Town,” the last tune Frank Sinatra performed on the big screen and one that would have epitomised Ol’ Blue Eyes had it not been supplanted a few years later by…
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The Magnificent 60s 