Smart Words About Cinema
[Originally published in Movietone News 53, January 1977] Sherlock Holmes is an item nowadays. When Billy Wilder’s exquisitely personal The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes opened at Christmastime 1970, he was such a commercial irrelevancy that the cashiers at the now-deceased Blue Mouse, where the picture was showing, were taking calls for Love Story at [...]
[Originally published in Queen Anne & Magnolia News, December 22, 2010] Adaptations are always difficult – for the filmmakers, of course, but also for viewers who know the original and face a challenge in trying to meet the new movie on its own terms. With True Grit, the latest offering from Joel Coen and Ethan [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 50, June 1976] Sam Peckinpah’s newest film opens with a whirling drill bit boring through a wall. But, whether by design or accident, The Killer Elite is not the study of espionage screwings and counter-screwings it might have been. In fact, for all its action, it is essentially a talk [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Orion’s The Great Santini has been sitting on the shelf for about a year now and seems unlikely to move off it unless pay-TV pops for it.* The second (surely there can’t be more?) directorial effort of screenwriter Lewis John Carlino (The Sailor Who Fell from Grace [...]