Jerry is less offering a job to Howard than he is seducing him, and in a very pragmatic, do-you-want-it-or-don’t-ya manner suggestive of a hook-up rather than a romance. It’s all metaphorical, of course, but everything about their interactions, from Jerry’s constant preening to Howard’s habit of talking with his mouth full, cranks the usual film noir homoeroticism up to 11.
Originally released as an episode of the long-running German television show “Tatort,” Samuel Fuller’s Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (1973) is a surreal parody of the crime caper, with plenty of sarcastic humor and references to beloved films noir to make it enjoyable.
J.D. Dawes (Chuck Norris) has just returned to his home in California after a long-term trucking job in Alaska. His little brother Billy (Michael Augenstein) idolizes him and wants to be a truck driver, too, so J.D. lets him deliver a load of frozen foods by himself — T.V. dinners, more specifically, a fact that hilariously comes into…
Stanley Kramer was one of the few producers who could make earnest social problem films really work; the melodrama in Pressure Point is a feature, not a bug.
It’s the dawn of the 1980s, and the upper-class hippie holdouts of Marin County, California are snarking and screwing their way through life, certain that health foods and open marriages will save their souls while blissfully unaware that they’re emotionally and psychologically adrift.
Phase IV is a slow, moody kind of film, with a decidedly trippy early 70s aesthetic and a synth music score that anticipates the indie horror trend just around the corner.
The best moments of The Deadly Bees (1966), the confused and tepid British horror flick, come when Ralph and Mary hurl barbs at each other a la Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, only with less booze and fewer swears.
Prick Up Your Ears does well in the details, especially when it comes to the collage that Halliwell covers their tiny apartment walls with, but the film also tends to skim the surface of lives that were fascinating and complicated…
Dismissed by many as just another crass teenage sex romp not-so-secretly marketed to pervs a generation older than the stars on the screen, The Last American Virgin (1982), in truth, doesn’t disabuse anyone of that notion during its first half.
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) …
