I suppose, to make it clear, I should preamble this review by stating that it is a positive one, albeit reined in, unlike the film.
Ken Russell's films usually explode onto the screen with an impressive amount of life, spirit, and style, sometimes to the point of his efforts being noticeable and it all seeming a bit forced. But the first moments of The Music Lovers are both wild and controlled enough that they reach the right balance and, to…
My decision goes back and forth between THX 1138 and Star Wars as being the best film George Lucas ever directed. I've never been a real American Graffiti fan, no matter how many times my father tries to push that film on me. Sometimes I have to say, "Yes, yes, it's good, it's good," just to get him off my back and drop it. The truth is, I think it's fine.
There are supposedly a number of cinematic experiments Lucas…
Let's skip the opening credits and customary cold open of an espionage thriller, and go straight to Clint Eastwood's first scene in The Eiger Sanction, where he is found playing an art professor giving an end-of-year address to a university lecture hall full of 1975 youths. The classroom is packed with onlooking mutton chop whiskers, afros, bleach blonde hair, and mustaches. It is an extraordinary scenario. Eastwood, with his aviator eye glasses, heartening the hippies about their futures instead of…
Formulaic, tropes abound, utterly contrived, but David Koepp does evolve regarding how to communicate information through the lens and in the frame. Never really cared for Stir of Echoes, especially as a kid, but I've been rather forgiving of Koepp lately (or at least I'm taking a deliberate interest), and this one does feel significantly of its time. That said, it takes about 45 minutes for the "detective story" to get going, and when it does we're able to more-or-less…
