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The Devil’s Brigade (1968) ***
I couldn’t get my head around the idea of the U.S. Army recruiting a bunch of undisciplined misfits, many with jail time, in order to link them up with a crack Canadian outfit. Turns out this part of...
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Selling War – The Pressbook for “The Devil’s Brigade” (1968)
This was an extremely unusual Pressbook for the 1960s. For a start with one minor exception there was only one advertisement. In the 1960s it was traditional for studios to provide upwards of five or...
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The Detective (1968) ****
Perhaps the boldest aspect of this raw look at the seamier side of life as a New York cop is that perennial screen loverboy Frank Sinatra plays a cuckold. Prior to what is always considered the more...
View ArticleBook into Film –“The Detective” (1968)
Screenwriter Abby Mann (Judgement at Nuremberg, 1961) had his work cut out adapting Roderick Thorp’s tombstone of a novel that ran to over 500 pages. The first job was to make the book – set mostly in...
View ArticleComing Soon – Book – Making of The Great Escape
Couldn’t be more excited and thought I would share my excitement with you as the idea that someone has finally written a book on The Great Escape – one of the quintessential movies of the 1960s – has...
View ArticleThe Comedy Man (1964) ***
Unemployed actor Chic Byrd (Kenneth More) clings to his sanity through a series of rejections in this realistic portrayal of life as a stage actor. Even humor fails to leaven despair as he fails for...
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The Rock (1996) *****
Amazingly, there’s been no 25th anniversary razzamatazz for this pulsating piledriver of an action movie, a stone cold classic. Instead of the standard breaking out of Alcatraz, a brilliant reversal...
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The Scorpio Letters (1967) ***
Desultory spy thriller with over-complicated story that’s worth a look mostly for the performance of Alex Cord (Stiletto, 1969). I can’t say I was a big fan of Cord and I certainly didn’t shower him...
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The French Dispatch (2021) **** – Seen at the Cinema
It can only be ironical that Wes Anderson’s wonderfully idiosyncratic, evocative, often hilarious, picture – featuring ex-pats writing for an American magazine in the style of the New Yorker – is...
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This Sporting Life (1963) ****
What began as the last gasp of the British New Wave working class kitchen sink drama has now after a six-decade gap resolved into a struggle over political and sexual ownership. Macho athlete Frank...
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