The Asphalt Jungle is a brilliantly conceived and executed anatomy of a crime -- or, as director John Huston and scripter Ben Maddow put it, "a left-handed form of human endeavor." Recently paroled master criminal Erwin "Doc" Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe), with funding from crooked attorney Emmerich (Louis Calhern), gathers several crooks together ...
The Killing was director Stanley Kubrick's first major film effort -- though, like Kubrick's earlier films, it was economically produced with an inexpensive cast. In a variation of his Asphalt Jungle role, Sterling Hayden plays veteran criminal Johnny Clay, planning one last big heist before settling down to a respectable marriage with Fay ...
One of the strangest westerns on record, Johnny Guitar has less in common with Zane Grey than it does with Sigmund Freud and Krafft-Ebbing. The title character, played by Sterling Hayden, is a guitar-strumming drifter who was once the lover of Arizona saloon-owner Vienna (Joan Crawford). Though her establishment doesn't make a dime, Vienna doesn't ...
In 1964, with the Cuban Missile Crisis fresh in viewers' minds, the Cold War at its frostiest, and the hydrogen bomb relatively new and frightening, Stanley Kubrick dared to make a film about what could happen if the wrong person pushed the wrong button -- and played the situation for laughs. Dr. Strangelove's jet-black satire (from a script by ...
Walter Wanger's first production for Allied Artists, Kansas Pacific is more slick and polished than the usual budget western. Set just before the Civil War, the film concerts Kansas Pacific railroad's westward expansion, a project stymied by the sabotage activities of Southern sympathizers. Military officer John Nelson (Sterling Hayden) is ...
Judy Bernly (Jane Fonda), a housewife whose husband has left her for his secretary, begins her own secretarial career at a huge corporation. Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin), a feisty, veteran office manager, instructs her on the perils and procedures of office life -- and of working for Franklin Hart Jr. (Dabney Coleman), their chauvinistic, sleazy ...
This near-legendary western stars Sterling Hayden as George Hanson, the son of a Swedish seaman-turned-farmer (Ted Stanhope). When he runs afoul of town boss Ed McNeil (Sebastian Cabot), Hanson's father is gunned down by McNeil's henchman Johnny Crale (Ned Young). Knowing full well that he can expect no help from the town's corrupt sheriff (Tyler ...
This suspenseful air-borne adventure can rightfully lay claim to being the Mother of All subsequent in-flight disaster films of the '70s. The trouble begins when the pilot and crew of a Canadian passenger plane suddenly find themselves doubled over from accidental ptomaine poisoning and unable to continue flying the plane. The only other person on ...
"It's OK with me...." Applying his deconstructive eye to the "film noir" tradition, Robert Altman updated Raymond Chandler in his 1973 version of Chandler's novel, The Long Goodbye. Smart-aleck, cat-loving private eye Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is certain that his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) isn't a wife-killer, even after the cops throw ...
Irvin Kershner directed this comedy-drama about one man's struggle with relationships and himself. Brooks (George Segal) is a middle-aged commercial artist who is at a personal and professional crossroads; he wants to take a stab at a career in fine art, but he can barely land enough assignments to support himself as it is. And while his marriage ...
Not surprisingly, this fascinating dissection of Gypsy life in America was vilified by several ethnic special-interest groups, who'd previously delivered their mimeoed missives to novelist Peter Maas, on whose book the film was based. Sterling Hayden is the "king" of a New York-based gypsy tribe, who on his deathbed passes his crown to his ...
An actress who once knew the heights of fame is forced to confronts the depths of defeat in this show business drama. Margaret Elliot (Bette Davis) was once one of Hollywood's great stars, but as she edges into her 50's, both her career and her life have reached an unfortunate crossroads. Margaret hasn't worked for several years, her marriage has ...
Jon Finch stars as Jerry Cornelius, swinging London's leading scientific genius, in this screen adaptation of the acclaimed science fiction novel by Michael Moorcock. As the world teeters on the brink of collapse following a nuclear war, Jerry discovers that a batch of microfilm containing "the final programme" -- the plan for an ideal, self ...
Kathy Ferguson (Barbara Stanwyck) is a cynical newspaper columnist in San Francisco, handling women's advice -- by chance one day, the paper's city editor assigns her to cover the woman's angle on the arrival of a pair of L.A. police detectives, Capt. Manny Alidos (Royal Dano) and Lt. Bill Doyle (Sterling Hayden), on the hunt for a murder suspect ...
Audiences got their money's worth and then some from Byron Haskin's The Denver and Rio Grande. Edmond O'Brien plays Jim Vesser, a former U.S. Cavalry officer and hero, now the man in charge of getting the D&RG's tracks across the Rockies first to secure a right-of-way -- he revels in the job, chosen for it by General Palmer (Dean Jagger), his ...
In an obvious attempt to recreate some of the power and impact of Henry King's Twelve O'Clock High, Lesley Selander's Flat Top tells its story in flashback as Dan Collier (Sterling Hayden), a senior officer, recalls from the bridge of the carrier Princeton during the Korean War, the first squadron he commanded on the ship during World War II. ...
Suddenly is the name of the small town invaded by professional assassin Frank Sinatra and his henchmen. Taking a local family hostage, Sinatra sets up a vigil at the second-story window of the family's home. From here, he intends to kill the President of the United States when the latter makes a whistle-stop visit. The film's tension level is ...
Hal Foster's Sunday-comics saga of a young Viking prince in the service of King Arthur is brought to the screen in CinemaScope and Technicolor in Prince Valiant. Despite the fact that he sports a dutch bob that makes him look like actress Phyllis Kirk, Robert Wagner is quite virile and convincing as the title character. Trained for the Round Table ...
Bernardo Bertolucci's 255-minute 1900 was a gargantuan undertaking, requiring the resources of three European countries and a trio of American movie studios. Set in the Italian town of Parma, the film's continuity backtracks from Liberation Day in 1945 to the occasion of composer/patriot Giuseppe Verdi's death in 1901. We follow the lives of two ...
Based on a novel by the iconoclastic Richard Condon (of Manchurian Candidate and Prizzi's Honor fame), Winter Kills was one of the vanguard efforts in the "JFK conspiracy" school of literature. Jeff Bridges stars as Nick Kegan, the scion of a powerful Kennedyesque family, who has done his best to make himself obscure after the assassination of his ...
A big black mamba snake that has gotten loose in a townhouse slithers through a kidnapping plot in this film. Based on a novel by Alan Scholefield, Venom features a big name British cast that seems to be slumming in a B-movie project. Dr. Marion Stowe (Sarah Miles) is a toxicologist who has brought the snake to London to study the properties of ...
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