Dir. Roman Polanski. Starring Natassja Kinski, Peter Firth, Leigh Lawson Dir. Delbert Mann. Starring David Niven, Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth Two scenes from Tess, one of the great movies of the 1970s, made me wonder what the movie would have been like in another director’s hands. When Angel (Firth) returns from Brazil, with a shaggier beard… Read More Tess (1979) and Separate Tables (1958)
The following is part of an overview of the top 100 American narrative fiction feature films, from my perspective. For an introduction to the project, click here. For a list of more than 800 films which I considered for the top 450 and my eligibility qualifications, click here. And for a way to vote on what you think the top… Read More Better than AFI’s Top 100 (2017): 100-96
Dir. Luchino Visconti. Starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale I don’t know that there are many other movies like The Leopard, at least not from the past fifty years. The Leopard would be able to function as a silent movie. Although the three hours are filled with dialogue, much of it seems as decorative as the frescoes… Read More The Leopard (1963)
Dir. Stanley Kramer. Starring Spencer Tracy, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell Burt Lancaster, as disgraced German jurist Ernst Janning, doesn’t have very much to say in Judgment at Nuremberg. Like a smart defendant, he is mostly silent for vast swaths of the film; Janning – through his lawyer, Hans Rolfe (Schell) – questions the validity of an… Read More Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
Dir. Alexander Mackendrick. Starring Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison There’s a movie out there about what Bill O’Reilly would have been like if he’d been born handsome in a different era. It’s called Sweet Smell of Success, and you should see it. If you are like me, and you went to high school and… Read More Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Seeing Things Secondhand 