The main character and murder solver in The Mirror Crack’d is a kindly old woman named Miss Marple played by Lansbury. The actress is aged via makeup to look much older than she was at the time. Lansbury does a good job with the speech and mannerisms of one of her character’s age...
Robert Aldrich was a skilled director whose distinctive approach to familiar film genres was overlooked for most of his career, at least in his home country of the United States; in Europe, his expertise was recognized as early as the 1950s, the first decade of his directing career. He bega...
The other nicety is the title of the film. One might assume (I did) that the character of Mimi is female and is seduced by a male but in Wertmüller’s film, it is the reverse. This causes traditional gender stereotypes to be turned on their heads with more awareness of assumptions. ...
The roots of the plot’s seemingly longbow is spelled out as Cooper recalls the attempts by “a bunch of quacks” to halt and reverse aging with monkey gland transplants, which supposedly once had quite a heyday amongst aging Hollywood stars. Corman’s imagery of Janice gazing out from her...
But there’s also something to be said for a film like Anatomy of a Murder, which baits viewers into believing it’s a standard courtroom drama, only to reveal itself as something much deeper with no easy answers. Even after the verdict has been read and the characters have happily moved...
Later she becomes Director of Lead Generation at an insurance company in a small town in New York state. Under her own steam (at night, of course, this being a noir) she researches prospects for a telemarketing murder business. Hey, it’s not like there isn’t a market. ...
In Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report," an officer from a futuristic police unit that employs three psychics is accused of a murder before it happens. On the run for his life, John Anderton (Tom Cruise) forces the audience to consider whether free will can exist when the future is defined...
In a chilling, brilliantly realized sequence Adam pursues Jeb into a canyon where he aims to gun the bad seed down but the tables are turned when he becomes a victim of his own vengeance. Jeb is cleared of murder by a local court but both Thor and Mrs. Callum turn against the orphan ...
Petty crook Ugarte shows up and boasts to Rick of "letters of transit" obtained by murdering two German couriers. The papers allow the bearers to travel freely around German-controlled Europe and to neutral Portugal, and are thus almost priceless to the refugees stranded in Casablanca. Ugarte ...
confrontation against the British police (and army) replaced the murder of Jews and destruction of Jewish property, and mass mobilization rather than emotional rhetorical excesses became themodus vivendi. Radicalization and militancy had become per-eminent. Violence and direct-action displaced diplomacy pr...