Burt Lancaster, gruff and manly, and Tony Curtis, delicately fey, star in Carol Reed's howlingly homoerotic tale of two leotard-clad acrobats in '50s Paris, vying for each other's respect, for the affections of Gina Lollobrigida, and for mastery of the triple somersault. "Teach me the triple!" says wide-eyed Curtis to Lancaster. "Are you crazy?!" splurts Lancaster, outraged.
Time has been kind to Less Than Zero. This kitschy exposé of teenage dysfunction in Beverly Hills, now freed from the weight of Bret Easton Ellis, has much in it to admire, from the fluorescent art direction and uber-'80s soundtrack to Andrew McCarthy's glassy-eyed performance and Robert Downey Jr's eerily prescient depiction of a rehab recidivist.
The promising 1996 debut by Greg Mottola, The Daytrippers is the epitome of early-'90s Sundance syndrome, where fulsome character and sharp dialogue take precedence over narrative logic. Thus, on the whim of daughter Eliza (Hope Davis), the entire Malone family (including indie queen Parker Posey) take an entertaining but essentially unjustifiable day trip to Manhattan.
Arthur Penn's follow-up to Bonnie And Clyde, based on Arlo Guthrie's blues hit about his arrest for littering and how it led to him being rejected for service in Vietnam. Penn's movie follows Guthrie as he wanders the US from draft board to college to commune, providing a time capsule of the dreams and rituals of late-'60s drop-out America; and one that, with its lingeringly downbeat ending, now looks prescient.
Lengthy adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about poor black folk in Georgia during the first half of the 20th century was Spielberg's first 'serious' film. The territory is admittedly dark (incest, domestic violence) and, despite its faults, it succeeds thanks to visual skill and a sterling cast led by Whoopi Goldberg.
Pristine restoration of Bruce Lee's only movie as star, director, writer and producer, released to mark the 30th anniversary of his death. He's a country boy come to the city, in this case Rome, where he must kung-fu kick the collective badass of gangsters trying to take over a Chinese restaurant. Not Lee's best, but it does have nunchakus and that great, no-frills fight with a hairy Chuck Norris in the Colosseum.
Shaving a hefty 75 minutes off Tarkovsky's original (and ponderous) 1972 sci-fi classic, director/writer/cinematographer/editor Steven Soderbergh delivers a tight, punchy fable about a crippled space station, a glowing planet, a terrified crew, a lonely psychiatrist (Clooney) and the memories of loss that bind them together. The moods here are both melancholic and thought provoking, while Soderbergh regular Cliff Martinez's lightly tintinnabulating score is utterly beguiling.
Robert Aldrich's blazing adaptation of Mickey Spillane's gut-wrenching nuclear age potboiler turns a well-worn genre on its head and retains its power to shock almost 50 years after it was made. Ralph Meeker yells his way through this movie as the quintessential Mike Hammer: loud, boorish, sexist, bullying and gleefully violent. Watch out for the back-to-front titles and apocalyptic climax. Truly the greatest private-eye movie ever made.
Though opening with a rocking Trainspotting-style intro and plenty of Tarantino-type cult film buffery, Bleeder gradually morphs into a truly horrifying psychodrama. Kim Bodnia delivers a stunning performance as reluctant dad-to-be Leo whose frustration begins a cycle of sickening abuse and ingeniously cruel revenge on the grim and seedy streets of Denmark.
Peter Shaffer's play is stripped of its stage trappings by director Sidney Lumet, exposing many of its failings—primarily Shaffer's preposterous, ponderous script. Admittedly, Peter Firth is believable as the disturbed boy with a quasi-religious fetish for horses, but Richard Burton's dreadfully hammy as his psychiatrist. Jenny Agutter supplies the gratuitous nudity.
