This is the SBBN entry for The Barrymore Trilogy Blogathon, hosted by In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood. Make sure to click here and enjoy all the fantastic entries! Poster art courtesy Jorday Jaquay on Pinterest. *** Lon Chaney was one of the biggest movie stars of the silent era, a master of…
Criminal Court is a tight little noir directed by Robert Wise, starring Tom Conway as a hot-shot attorney who accidentally frames his girlfriend for murder.
In a world where parks are full of small, evenly spaced groups of people all wearing skin-tight clothing in bright primary colors, where everyone is required by law to blow dry their hair and wear lip gloss, one recreational sport reigns supreme: roller disco. Voluptuous young Terry Barkley (Linda Blair) is a musical genius —…
The scene is set at a gypsy camp in the 1940s, as Zharko Stepanowicz (Sterling Hayden in one of his late-career mandatory beard roles), self-proclaimed King of the Gypsies, demands to be given young Rose (Tiffany Bogart), as he’s already paid $4,000 for her so she can marry his son Groffo (Mark Vahanian). Rose’s parents…
The Outrageous Sophie Tucker ★★★✫✫ Director: William Gazecki Menemsha Films (Official Site) 96 Minutes Release: July 24, 2015 (limited) – Sophie Tucker was fabulous, flashy and a born entertainer. A true rags-to-riches story, she started out in Vaudeville in the early 1900s; by the early 1920s, the extraordinary Tucker was a major singing star. Known…
Burned-out police detective Dewey Wilson (Albert Finney) gets reluctantly called in to investigate the murder of high-profile millionaire Christopher van der Veer (Max M. Brown) in Wolfen, the 1981 sociopolitical horror film directed by Michael Wadleigh. Van der Veer, his wife Pauline (Anne Marie Pohtamo), and their driver Harrison (Jeffery V. Thompson) were found sliced…
Creep ★★★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Patrick Brice The Orchard 80 Minutes Release: June 23, 2015 on iTunes / July 14, 2015 on Netflix – On his way to a thousand-dollar-a-day gig, young filmmaker Aaron (Patrick Brice) turns his camera on himself, perhaps out of excitement for the job, or maybe a little nervousness. His destination…
Ralph Nelson’s jazzy, hard-boiled noir Once a Thief stars Alain Delon as Italian (!) immigrant Eddie Pedak with a criminal past who’s just trying to go straight, but his gangster brother Walter (Jack Palance) keeps dragging him back into the fold. Opening with the cold-blooded killing of grocery store owner Lisa Wing (an uncredited actress),…
Tangerine ★★★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Sean Baker Magnolia Pictures (Official Site) 88 Minutes Release: July 10, 2015 (limited) – It’s Christmas Eve in Los Angeles, and Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez), fresh off a 30-day stint in the slammer, catches up on the local gossip with her good friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor). Unfortunately, Alexandra lets slip…
Carey Jackson (Robert Montgomery), foreign correspondent for a huge magazine conglomo, has found himself in his employer Carlton Towne’s leather-lined office (“Must be like living in a wallet”), about to be fired. The company is closing their Vienna office because of post-war censorship, but there’s no work for him back home, either. At the last…