What begins as a routine tour for a visiting Congressman of Strategic Air Commands headquarters in Omaha, turns into the ultimate nightmare. An unidentified aircraft is spotted on a course toward Detroit. Airborne bombers are scrambled to fixed points around…
It’s been widely reported that Bette Davis (All About Eve) wanted to play Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. When the role went to Vivian Leigh, she was very disappointed. Sometimes described as a consolation prize, Davis played Julie…
Peter Fonda’s third and final (as of this writing), directorial effort, Wanda Nevada is set in 1950’s Arizona against the backdrop of the Korean War. Fonda stars as Beaudray Demerille, a drifter and grifter, who wins 13-year-old Wanda Nevada (Brooke…
An unconventional Hollywood blockbuster, On Golden Pond is a character driven drama that explores aging, mortality, and reconciliation. Based on the play by Ernest Thompson, On Golden Pond finally earned legendary actor Henry Fonda a Best Actor Academy Award in…
Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name Trilogy—A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)—made a movie star out of Clint Eastwood, but by the early 1970’s the spaghetti…
Produced and directed by Fielder Cook from a screenplay by Sidney Carroll, adapted from their TV play Big Deal in Laredo (which had originally aired on the DuPont Show of the Week in 1962), A Big Hand for the Little…
Sometimes a Great Notion—the second of five films directed by Paul Newman in his career and based on a novel by Ken Kesey—is both impressive and exasperating. It’s Impressive, because cinematographer Richard Moore (The Life and Times of Judge Roy…
Rouben Mamoulian is the director who helped create the greatest swordfight in movie history, in The Mark of Zorro (1940), between Tyrone Power as Don Diego Vega and Basil Rathbone as Captain Esteban Pasquale. So right away, I trust his…
On the face of it, a movie which takes place almost entirely in one room, consists of 12 men who do nothing but talk—and don’t even have names—should be anything but a searing experience. 1957’s 12 Angry Men an undisputed…