Wilson (1944)
BBB.5 (out of 5) Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck really put his back into the studio’s prestige picture of 1944 with this polished and respectable hagiography of the 28th American president, applying the… Continue reading
Tag Archive: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
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The Towering Inferno
BBB.5 (out of 5) An enormous skyscraper made entirely of glass and featuring every possible modern convenience is built in San Francisco (prime earthquake territory, by the way) and its owner (William Holden)… Continue reading
In Old Chicago
BBBB (out of 5) The old tale of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow starting the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which devastated more than half of the city, was actually a lie that spread easily… Continue reading
The Robe
BBBB (out of 5) A new era of Hollywood was ushered in with this first Cinemascope release (though How To Marry A Millionaire was actually shot earlier and distributed later), which also served as Richard… Continue reading
Nightmare Alley
BBBB (out of 5) Tyrone Power plays the member of a carnival troop who longs to make himself the star attraction, scheming his way into Joan Blondell‘s arms and convincing her to teach… Continue reading
The Only Game In Town
BB.5 (out of 5) Vegas showgirl Elizabeth Taylor stops at a divey bar for a drink and is charmed enough by the joint’s pianist (Warren Beatty) to take him home. She’s looking to alleviate… Continue reading
Patton
BBBB (out of 5) George C. Scott soars in this fascinating biopic of General George S. Patton. He makes a name for himself after a successful 1942 campaign against Rommel in North Africa that… Continue reading
The Blue Bird
B (out of 5) The first Soviet-American co-production, meant to outwit the political battles of the Cold War by showing the unifying nature of art; the effort was something of a failure since… Continue reading
My Cousin Rachel (1952)
BBBB (out of 5) Daphne Du Maurier’s captivating mystery was barely on the shelves for a year when this big screen adaptation was released, introducing mass audiences to the talent of Richard Burton in… Continue reading
Alien: Covenant
BB (out of 5) We move ten years past the events of Prometheus and find ourselves aboard the Covenant, a vessel carrying colonists to a distant planet where they will create a new civilization. A series of circumstances… Continue reading
Snatched
BB.5 (out of 5) Amy Schumer‘s life is at an all-time low: she’s just been fired from her crappy retail job, and her boyfriend has dumped her and left her with two tickets… Continue reading
Logan
BBBB (out of 5) We move about twenty-odd years beyond the present and things aren’t looking so slick for a couple of X-Men. Professor X (Patrick Stewart) is in his nineties and mentally degenerating, his… Continue reading
Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates
BBB (out of 5) Brothers Mike (Adam DeVine) and Dave (Zac Efron) Stangle spend their days selling beer to drinking establishments and their nights getting in trouble while drinking it. Their parents, exasperated with… Continue reading
Independence Day: Resurgence
BBB (out of 5) It has been twenty years since all the nicest buildings in the world were squashed by an alien invasion, after which the surviving humans became one unified planet that learned to benefit… Continue reading
X-Men: Apocalypse
BBB.5 (out of 5) After seeing their beginnings in training and their facing off with their future counterparts, the provocatively named X-Men are digging deep into their lore to investigate their very origins. In… Continue reading
Deadpool
BB.5 (out of 5) Ryan Reynolds has a great life as a thug for hire, romancing a plucky hooker (Morena Baccarin) and enjoying the underworld night life until the bad news comes while visiting… Continue reading
Staircase
BB (out of 5) Richard Burton and Rex Harrison have been living together for over twenty years, running a barbershop downstairs and bickering constantly upstairs, with Burton taking care of his aging and infirm… Continue reading
The Martian
BBB (out of 5) A science expedition on the red planet encounters a storm that almost destroys the crew’s makeshift habitat, with one member (Matt Damon) injured by a windblown satellite. The rest… Continue reading
A Walk With Love And Death
BBB (out of 5) John Huston castS his daughter Anjelica in her movie debut for this strange romantic drama set in medieval Europe. The ravaged French countryside has the distant troubles of battle made… Continue reading
Spy
BBBB (out of 5) Handsome C.I.A. agent Jude Law works the field looking gorgeous in a tux, his ability to move smoothly through enemy territory and always know where bad guys are hiding possible… Continue reading
The Sand Pebbles
BBB (out of 5) Robert Wise followed his mammothly successful The Sound Of Music with this giant war epic. Steve McQueen plays an engineer who boards a gunboat in 1920s China, rife with anger… Continue reading
Escape From The Planet Of The Apes
BBB.5 (out of 5) High-level entry in the film series, much better than the previous Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, and almost as fun as the original. In this exciting adventure, Cornelius… Continue reading
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
BBBB (out of 5) There couldn’t possibly be a better way to spend Hallowe’en, or the odd Saturday night for that matter, or any night come to think of it, than cramming into… Continue reading
Myra Breckenridge
BB (out of 5) Based on the popular, scandalous book by Gore Vidal, this film was disowned by the author the moment he saw it. Future film critic Rex Reed stars as a… Continue reading
Peyton Place
BBBB (out of 5) The bestselling novel about sex and scandal in small-town America reaches the big screen with surprisingly few compromises. Lana Turner plays a single mother trying to raise her daughter (Diane… Continue reading
Beneath The Planet Of The Apes
B (out of 5) Taking place right after the original’s shocking ending, this film has Charlton Heston disappear beneath a cave and another astronaut (James Franciscus) search the planet for him. What Franciscus finds… Continue reading
Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls
B (out of 5) A sequel in name only, this film has no connection with the Jacqueline Susann turkey except that it too is about girls who come to Hollywood to make it… Continue reading
Hello, Dolly!
BB (out of 5) Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker gets a garish musical treatment in this overblown film. Barbra Streisand plays Dolly Levi, a rich widow who specializes in setting up the single and the… Continue reading
Planet Of The Apes (1968)
BBBB.5 (out of 5) Charlton Heston plays an astronaut whose spaceship has been in outer space for so long that the modern day Earth life he left behind is long gone for many thousands… Continue reading
Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid
BBBB.5 (out of 5) This classic western, which is about as popular as Sam Peckinpah’s marvelous The Wild Bunch, stars a perfectly matched Robert Redford and Paul Newman as a Bonnie and Clyde of the… Continue reading
Monkey Business (1952)
BBBB (out of 5) Scientist Cary Grant discovers a formula that can give its taker a new found youthfulness. He starts off testing it on the apes in his laboratory, who all turn frisky… Continue reading
Niagara
BB.5 (out of 5) Other than Don’t Bother To Knock, this is a rare opportunity to watch Marilyn Monroe enjoy her darker side. She plays a woman unhappily married to Joseph Cotten who plots with… Continue reading
Silver Streak
BBB.5 (out of 5) Gene Wilder is an airplane-phobic book editor who boards a train that will take him from Chicago to Los Angeles in what he hopes will be a pleasure trip. His… Continue reading
The Turning Point
BB.5 (out of 5) The world of ballet gets world class treatment from Hollywood and director Herbert Ross, but the screenplay of this film is mired down in soap opera cliches. Shirley MacLaine… Continue reading
The Razor’s Edge
BBBB (out of 5) Excellent drama adapted from W. Somerset Maugham’s novel. Tyrone Power plays a wealthy socialite who abandons beautiful fiancee Gene Tierney to seek enlightenment in the far east. Having achieved his goal,… Continue reading
We’re Not Married
BB.5 (out of 5) A bevy of happily married couples each get the same letter telling them that the judge who joined them in holy matrimony was legally unauthorized to do so, and… Continue reading
Star Wars
BBBB.5 (out of 5) This science-fiction blockbuster breathed new life into the genre by creating a space opera (inspired by director George Lucas’s love of Japanese samurai films) in which passionate character conflicts… Continue reading
The Snake Pit
BBBB (out of 5) This glimpse into the world of mental illness has not dated all that well, but it’s a powerful subject that is dealt with very well for its time. Olivia… Continue reading
Gentleman’s Agreement
BBB (out of 5) Gregory Peck decides to research anti-Semitism for his newspaper by taking up residence under a Jewish name and seeing how he is treated by others in his community. This film… Continue reading
Pinky
BBBBB (out of 5) Years after she was sent away to nursing school to avoid the fate of her washer-woman grandmother (legendary singer Ethel Waters), Pinky (Jeanne Crain) returns to her Southern home a… Continue reading
How Green Was My Valley
BBBB (out of 5) Wonderful Oscar-winner undeservedly beat Citizen Kane for the best picture prize of its year but is still an excellent family film decades down the road. Based on the novel… Continue reading
Wee Willie Winkie
BBBB (out of 5) Shirley Temple and her mother show up in late nineteenth-century India to live with her grandfather (C. Aubrey Smith) who is colonel of the British army there. Immediately upon… Continue reading
Doctor Dolittle (1967)
B.5 (out of 5) Adaptation of the popular children’s novel is a downright embarrassing mess. Rex Harrison gives a spirited performance as the famous doctor whose parrot speaks fluent English and teaches him… Continue reading
Fantastic Voyage
BBB (out of 5) Stephen Boyd plays an army commander who is brought to a research laboratory to head up a secret operation: the rescue of a very ill politician who was nearly assassinated… Continue reading
Tora! Tora! Tora!
BB.5 (out of 5) The attack on Pearl Harbour is memorialized in a giant epic project that sees American and Japenese studios admirably joining forces. The Japanese sections (originally to be directed by… Continue reading
The Omen (1976)
BB.5 (out of 5) Undercooked horror film that pales in comparison to the enjoyment of Rosemary’s Baby or The Exorcist but still has its moments. Gregory Peck plays an American diplomat living in… Continue reading
Demetrius And The Gladiators
BB (out of 5) Bargain-basement sequel to The Robe that takes all the overblown epic spirituality out of its predecessor and makes a clunky, overblown action movie pretending to be religious. Victor Mature… Continue reading
Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World
BBBB.5 (out of 5) Excellent adventure film perfectly recaptures the spirit of the original Mutiny On The Bounty and other grand epics of yesteryear. Russell Crowe is masterful and commanding as the captain… Continue reading
Two For The Road
BBBB.5 (out of 5) While trying to decide whether or not to break up their marriage, Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn relive all the best and worst moments of the years they have been together… Continue reading