A magnificent Lumet - made at the peak of his European cinematic tutelage and using a sharp, smart melting pot of interracial, intercontinental, intersexual talent both in front of and behind the camera... If there’s one thing I love as much as a Lumet figuring out NYC (a coherent, influential melting pot if ever there was) it’s a Lumet figuring out the American South or Europe (like the melting pot that comprises the Murder On The Orient Express, which recognizes…

What originally was intended as an improvisational comedy between Zero Mostel and director Seth Holt is now a breathtakingly self-reflexive cross-species blend of mod ‘60’s London chuckler, trad British mystery and typically lusty and subversive Frank Tashlin live-action cartoon. It’s a dangerous stylistic experiment and a late masterpiece for Tashlin. Tony Randall plays Tony Randall playing Agatha Christie’s Belgian master-sleuth Hercule Poirot. Margaret Rutherford plays Margaret Rutherford playing Agatha Christie’s British master-sleuth Miss Marple. Nothing is real and everything is…

A 74 minute pot-boiler rocketed into seriously transcendent cinematic territory by some extraordinary (and way off-beat) Mexican location shooting, sound design, cinematography. The ensemble cast often perversely attaching themselves onto the dark rhythm of the thing, creating a life and energy entirely symbiotic with the exterior creative elements. Sure, the dialog leans on the bleeding heart, the resolution on the snappy, happy tie-up -- but nearly everything before that displaces the viewer in a world of poverty, desperation, mental illness,…