Panic on the 4th of July

My Cinematic Alphabet, '70s Style

2011-04-15T13:17:00.011-04:00

More Netflix Instant '70s: Last Embrace, The Manitou, and The Last of Sheila

2011-03-15T10:58:00.012-04:00

Last Embrace (1979, dir. Jonathan Demme) Unavailable on DVD, this suspense thriller plays like minor Hitchcock, complete with obsessive love for a dead woman, a convoluted mystery stuffed with red herrings, a swirling romantic score, and a climactic chase at a national monument (here, Niagara Falls). I sought this one out as a missing piece of Scheider's '70s filmography, and while he's always

Netflix Instant '70s Horror: 10 Rillington Place, Vampire Circus, and Audrey Rose

2010-10-15T14:30:00.003-04:00

10 Rillington Place (1971, dir. Richard Fleischer) A somber, grim retelling of one of England's most notorious serial killers, played with great and creepy skill by David Attenborough. Disarmingly quiet and deferential, John Christie poses as a former military doctor who now lives with his wife in a terribly run down flat in the terribly run down section of Notting Hill, London, in 1950. The film

John Huston's Fat City (1972): Makin' It Through the Night

2010-06-29T18:13:00.007-04:00

Boxing films are never about the sport of boxing. Boxing is so primitive, so stark and simple-minded, that it can only function as a metaphor for the larger concerns of character and conflict. Which is simply fine with me as someone who really has no interest in sports; so many great movies are "about" boxing: Rocky (1976), Raging Bull (1980), Body and Soul (1947), The Harder They Fall (1955),

Jaws: On a 35-Year-Old Obsession

2010-06-20T12:45:00.014-04:00

June 20th, 2010 marks the 35th anniversary of the release of the movie JAWS. This post is part of Radiation-Scarred Review's 2010 SHARKATHALON, which celebrates this milestone with blog posts around the web."There is a creature alive today that has survived millions of years of evolution. Without change, without passion, and without logic. It lives to kill. A mindless eating machine, it will

Steven Spielberg's Jaws: More Momentary Appreciation on its 35th Anniversary

2010-06-19T13:50:00.006-04:00

June 20th, 2010 marks the 35th anniversary of the release of the movie JAWS. This post is part of Radiation-Scarred Review's 2010 SHARKATHALON, which celebrates this milestone with blog posts around the web.Again, a collection of in-between moments and lines from Jaws that I find as memorable, effective, and artfully composed as any of the big standout action pieces. Of course, this is

Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975): A Momentary Appreciation on its 35th Anniversary

2010-06-18T10:15:00.003-04:00

June 20th, 2010 marks the 35th anniversary of the release of the movie JAWS. This post is part of Radiation-Scarred Review's 2010 SHARKATHALON, which celebrates this milestone with blog posts around the web.There are moments in Jaws that simply leave me speechless. Quiet moments. Odd moments. In-between moments. Touches here and there that add color and depth and shade and wit to the

As If God Created the Devil and Gave Him... Jaws

2010-06-17T17:50:00.000-04:00

June 20th, 2010 marks the 35th anniversary of the release of the movie JAWS. This post is part of Radiation-Scarred Review's 2010 SHARKATHALON, which celebrates this milestone with blog posts around the web.These are a few of the foreign movie posters for Jaws, Steven Spielberg's summer blockbuster masterpiece. Above is the French poster, with its title translated not as Jaws but Teeth of

Gene Hackman in Night Moves (1975): Winner Lose All

2010-04-17T19:35:00.005-04:00

Unjustifiably forgotten today, Arthur Penn's 1975 Night Moves stars Gene Hackman as Harry Moseby, a former football hero who now tries to cut it as a private detective, and one obsessed with chess at that. Sporting one of the finer non-Burt Reynolds mustaches of '70s cinema, Hackman is at his everyman best, and is as good here as he is in The French Connection or The Conversation or, hell,

Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976): I Can't Pretend and I Know I'm Alone

2010-02-23T21:45:00.015-05:00

Some thoughtful movie fans see American personhood summed up in characters like Rocky Balboa, Atticus Finch, George Bailey, Forrest Gump, Cool Hand Luke, and even Vito Corleone or Tony Montana. But I see much of it in Travis Bickle, the wounded Vietnam vet and desperate loner of Taxi Driver (1976), slowly going psychotically mad in the (then-) ruined urban landscape of New York City. It is my

Albert Brooks's Real Life (1979): Burning Down the House

2010-01-25T19:10:00.006-05:00

It's satisfyingly ironic that the first reality show was broadcast on PBS, that most esteemed bastion of social conscience and good taste, in 1973. An American Family showcased the Loud family and their daily lives in a 12-hour miniseries for the delectation of a record-setting millions of viewers. Interestingly, son Lance was perhaps the first openly gay person on television. You don't hear much

Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973): Doing His Best James Dean

2010-01-22T00:15:00.011-05:00