Urban Cowboy

*(this review originally appeared on Cinema Sentries)* Urban Cowboy (1980) is one of those faddish films that has aged poorly.  John Travolta plays Bud Davis, a country boy from Spur, Texas, who goes to Houston to work in an oil refinery. After hours, he frequents Gilley’s, a honkey-tonk the size of a football field, with a…

Steel Wheels Live (Live From Atlantic City, NJ, 1989)

*(this review originally appeared on Cinema Sentries)* In 1989, the Rolling Stones returned to the stage from a seven-year touring hiatus. They needn’t have bothered. Ok, so before we go any further, a word on my loyalty to the Stones. I’ve never seen them live; I’ve only seen video clips. I’m a millennial but traveled…

Shampoo

*(this review originally appeared on Cinema Sentries)* Few films capture the mood of late '60s Los Angeles quite like Shampoo does; and few films of the '70s—that hallowed, so-called final golden age of cinema—carry so much pedigree but miss the bull's-eye. I think that to love, let alone like, Shampoo, you must share its filmmakers'…

Road Games

*(this review originally appeared on Cinema Sentries)* From scene one of Road Games, the film grabs us. There is an extended moment, however, when we realize we are in the hands of a director who knows exactly what he wants and has the chops to pull it off, and it comes several minutes into the picture: …

Picturing Peter Bogdanovich: My Conversations with the New Hollywood Director

*(this review originally appeared on Cinema Sentries)* Director Peter Bogdanovich is neither misunderstood nor unappreciated, I think. His claim to fame as a movie brat (though he might wince at that description) is secure. His early ‘70s trifecta—The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc?, and Paper Moon—cements the legend.  Those films endure.  And they do so, because--as Picturing Peter…

Murder by Decree

*(this review originally appeared on Cinema Sentries)* Murder by Decree is one of the better Sherlock Holmes movies. Directed by Bob Clark, it features an all-star cast. Christopher Plummer plays Sherlock Holmes and James Mason plays Dr. John H. Watson. As they become embroiled in the Jack the Ripper slayings, they follow the trail of blood…

Lonely Are the Brave

*(this review originally appeared on Cinema Sentries)* Based on Edward Abbey’s novel, The Brave Cowboy, Lonely Are the Brave (1962) came and went without a fuss. Now known as Kirk Douglas’s favorite of his own films, it has gained a following as a neo-Western classic, and deservedly so. It gives the man-out-of-place element a wistful touch.  Douglas plays…

Cruising

*(this review originally appeared on Cinema Sentries)* Nightmarishly vivid, director William Friedkin’s Cruising, a divisive film about an undercover New York cop (Al Pacino, miscast) who cruises gay S&M bars in search of a killer, is a time capsule without a center.  For decades, critics of the film complained that it painted this segment of the…

Canyon Passage

*(this review originally appeared on Cinema Sentries)* If you were to say I would love to see a Technicolor noir western directed by Jacques Tourneur, set in Oregon, I would say you are darn tootin.’  I would love to see it and see it I did.  Canyon Passage (1946) is that rarest of things: a good art…

Bones

*(this review was originally published on Cinema Sentries)* Bones bores. Director Ernest Dickerson, Spike Lee's former DP, pulls off a few nifty visual tricks. Chief among them are a black dog that projectile-vomits maggots, and a bulging wall of flesh that embodies a nightmarish depiction of hell.  But we spend the first hour waiting for something to…

Prophecy

*(this review originally appeared on Cinema Sentries)* It was not supposed to turn out like this.  For years, the Pitney lumber mill in Maine soaked its river-borne logs in mercury, poisoning the water and wreaking havoc on the ecosystem. Tadpoles are now as big as boots, the salmon even bigger. Then there are the bears—oh…

IT Chapter Two

*(this review originally appeared on Cinema Sentries)* IT is back. The Losers Club, a tight-knit group of kids—good kids—with chips on their shoulders, humiliated Pennywise the dancing (and shapeshifting) killer clown (Bill Skarsgard), forcing him to hide in his hole. Now, 27 years later, Pennywise (he, she, “IT”) wakes from its slumber, hungry for flesh.…

Cattle Annie and Little Britches

*(this review originally appeared on Cinema Sentries)* Ripe for rediscovery, Cattle Annie and Little Britches follows the exploits of the real-life titular characters, two teenage girls in love with Ned Buntline’s stories about western outlaws. Having loused up their jobs at a cantina, they soon fall in with the tired Doolin-Dalton gang, and get more than they…