HOUSE OF DYNAMITE
By sheer coincidence, I watched the 1964 movie Fail-Safe just a few weeks ago, and it’s extraordinary how closely it resembles Kathryn Bigelow’s House of Dynamite. I’m not talking about plagiarism. The 51-year-old film is very much of its time, along with Seven…
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER
Do you find yourself absorbing the day’s latest news and feel like screaming? Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson found another solution: making One Battle After Another, a film so outrageous—yet so timely—that it seems to say, “Don’t scream…just laugh at the sheer…
THE LONG WALK
Does anyone out there remember They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? That 1969 film was based on a 1935 novel by Horace McCoy, inspired by the bizarre Depression-era craze of dance marathons. Slick entrepreneurs would hire out a ballroom or auditorium and…
MY “SCOOP” WITH ROBERT REDFORD
I had the good fortune of meeting and interviewing Robert Redford a number of times, but none of those occasions caused quite the stir that my first encounter did. In those days, the opening night of the Sundance Film…
WATCHING TV TODAY: TO BINGE OR NOT TO BINGE
For many years, my wife and I spent most of our evenings attending press screenings of new and upcoming films. That was our routine, and while I didn’t disdain television I rarely had time to watch it, let alone…
A MODERN WESTERN THAT’S 95 YEARS OLD
Whatever your opinion of early talkies, you’re in for a jolt when you see Law and Order (1932), recently released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. It isn’t just the bravura camerawork or the arresting performances by Walter Huston and Harry Carey,…
COULDA, WOULDA, SHOULDA
I don’t harbor many regrets in my life; I’ve been fortunate to meet people and have experiences that others might only dream about. But there are a few things I could and should have done better. One is to…
