Parallax View

[Originally published in Movietone News 50, June 1976] Several people have assured me that Logan’s Run is a well-above-average science fiction novel; not having read it, I’m hardly about to contradict them, or attempt to blame the failure of the film version on the novelists. But as Logan’s Run dribbled out via a hasty, convenient, [...]

This coming Tuesday, Jan. 24, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce nominees for its 2011 awards. In at least one large-looming respect, the slate is by definition unpredictable. After two years of fielding ten nominations in the Best Picture category (as opposed to five every year between 1944 and 2008), the [...]

Images, lines, gestures, moods from the year’s films — Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Control (John Hurt), aced out of MI6 after the disaster in Budapest, announces, “Smiley is coming with me.” Smiley (Gary Oldman), his back to the camera, tilts his head a millimeter — surprise? acceptance? both?… — The Descendants: the sound Matt King’s [...]

Welcome 2012 with one last look back at the best releases of 2011, as seen by the contributors to Parallax View. Critics listed in reverse alphabetical order Andrew Wright (as posted at Salt Lake Weekly) 1. Melancholia 2. Rise of the Planet of the Apes 3. Cave of Forgotten Dreams 4. 13 Assassins 5. Drive [...]

[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] The Big Bus is no movie to slap down first-run admission prices for, but if it turns up on a double bill with another halfway-enticing film, plan to give it a chance. I’d like to pretend it’s a better movie than it is, because most of the [...]

MSN Movies published its annual Best of the Year poll this week, featuring Top Ten lists from thirteen MSN writers including a trio of Parallax View contributors: Richard T. Jameson, Kathleen Murphy and Sean Axmaker. The rest of the line-up isn’t too shabby either: Jim Emerson, Don Kaye, Glenn Kenny, Kim Morgan, Mary Pols, James [...]

[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] “Corpse provided by Donald Sutherland.” That acknowledgment amid the end credits of End of the Game suggests that a certain spirit of playfulness informed the film’s making. Actor-turned-director Maximilian Schell cast actor-turned-director-turned-actor Martin Ritt in the crucial role of an aging, crotchety, dyspeptic, cigar-puffing police inspector with [...]

[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] In this life sure things are rare, and it were churlish not to pay tribute to one when found. Very well, then: see James Goldstone marked down as the director of a given film and rest assured it will be a shambles. Not that a mindless pirate [...]

[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] A vaguely arty bourgeois couple experiment with sexual freedom and end by pretty thoroughly disassembling their lives as they have known them. The bored wife of a New Guinea–based diplomat leaves the capital long enough to scout up some exotic feathers for the world of haute couture, [...]

[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] Lifeguard belongs to that elect, if scarcely elite, class of film fondly designated “the nice little movie.” It would be a poor summer indeed that didn’t yield one or two specimens of this type (which I say rhetorically since it is a miserable movie summer but there’s [...]

[Originally published in Movietone News 52, October 1976] Things break fast in Seattle. The light, for instance. A fellow can come home to his rooftop pad, take a sniff of midafternoon air, follow that up with a quick shower, and drift into the livingroom to find it invaded by not only a ski-masked burglar but [...]

[Originally published in Movietone News 52, October 1976] Surely Richard Harris presents a problem to directors, one that few of them have managed to surmount, camouflage, or get around, much less turn on its head and use to their advantage. To Antonioni he was mostly a carrot-topped fleshtone against emotionally apt pastel backdrops (Red Desert); [...]

[Originally published in Movietone News 52, October 1976] Although I rapped it in MTN 25, the previous Gator McKlusky adventure White Lightning lingers in the memory as a middlin’-competent entry in the fast-driving, grin-and-punch genre of Southern melodrama—nothing to urge on discriminating audiences, but undeserving of particular scorn. Burt Reynolds had yet to be intelligently [...]

Hearts of the West will be shown on Turner Classic Movies this coming Friday, Nov. 4, at 9 a.m. West Coast time, 12 noon Eastern. Here’s the program note from the “Marvelous Modern Scripts” screening. —RTJ There isn’t really a whole lot that needs to be teased out of Hearts of the West. It’s a [...]

[Originally published in Movietone News 52, October 1976] If George Armitage has any consciousness of the existence of film critics and their predilection for creating cult figures, he’s doubtlessly waiting for some little-magazine commentator who hasn’t turned over a rock lately to hail him as an “American primitive.” His credentials? A storyline so incredible a [...]