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Last of the Mobile Hot Shots 1970
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…
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The Alphabet Murders 1965
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…
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A Life in the Balance 1955
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,…
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The Horse Soldiers 1959
The film is pure poetry. Sad that so many people feel this is "lesser" Ford (a reminder that not 30 years ago THE SEARCHERS was regarded in the same dim critical half-light) when clearly it's a major work that clarifies nooks and crannies of the director's ongoing essay on moral elasticity in the face of cultural and racial bondage. An extremely sophisticated film and one which looks back on the majestic, proud cavalry pictures of Ford's past and anticipates the withering, apologetic shame of all that was yet to come.
