Most prison movies make me uneasy, a consequence of acute claustrophobia and fears of being found out. There are exceptions, notably Escape from Alcatraz and the rest of the Alcatraz trio, Point Blank and The Rock, which take different approaches to the genre. Then those films with sexy broads taking showers are a different kettle of suds.
Russell Rouse’s House of Numbers, adapted by Rouse and Don Mankiewicz from a novel by Jack Finney (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) is…
“I’m not sure I have the stuff to be president.”
“Has anybody?”
Otto’s Advise & Consent is slow and bloated, crammed with improbable actions, and occasionally corny, but it has mostly good performances from a large cast and is quite fascinating as a peek at a much more innocent time in America.
The president of the United States (Franchot Tone) wants Senator Robert Leffingwell (Henry Fonda) to be appointed secretary of state. Senators Seabright Cooley (Charles Laughton) and Brigham Anderson (Don…
I approached James Vanderbilt’s Nuremberg hoping it wouldn’t be just a Nazis-are-pure-evil, we’re-morally-superior account of the 1945-1946 International Military Tribunal. It’s impossible to present an account of this historic event without running into predictability now and then, but for the most part, the film is powerful drama.
The protagonists are Dr. Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), an army psychiatrist assigned to make psychological assessments of the twenty-two Nazis on trial, Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon), the Supreme Court justice assigned as the…
“Stranger in town?”
“That’s right.”
Winchester ‘73, the first of eight Tony Mann-Jimmy Stewart collaborations, is a great Western because it takes a conventional revenge plot and keeps twisting it with an unusual structure. Lin McAdam (Mr. Stewart) wins the rifle of the title in a shooting competition against Dutch Henry Brown (Stephen McNally). Lin and sidekick High-Spade Frankie Wilson (Millard Mitchell) have been tracking Brown for reasons we have to wait for. Then Brown steals the gun, and it…
