“Why can’t they use top class killers? Guys who know their business. When one of the big boys gets caught, it’s the real panic and then they really get scared.” – Rudy (Eddie Constantine) in HAIL, MAFIA (1965, AKA Je vous salue, mafia!)

Could there have been a more ideally matched couple from the Warner Bros. stock company than this pair of New York natives with their streetsmart ways and attitudes to match? It seems strange that James Cagney and Joan Blondell aren’t usually included in that rarified group of Gable & Harlow or Tracy & Hepburn or [...]

Although released in 2001 and greatly admired by many prominent film critics, DELBARAN, directed by Iranian filmmaker Abolfazl Jalili, is not nearly as well known as other Iranian prize winners such as Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) or Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Kandahar (2001) but deserves to be. The story of Kaim, a fourteen-year-old [...]

There are certain movie titles that make you pause and consider the mystery, allure or absurdity of their meaning. They can promise so much and deliver so little like BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA (1966) or SHE GODS OF TIGER REEF (1958). Or they can overdeliver on their promise to an astonished but grateful audience [...]

WE WANT YOU SALLY….WE WANT YOU….COME TO US!        

One of the more ambitious and offbeat Westerns of the early sixties, THE LAST SUNSET (1961) is an odd duck that has its admirers and detractors with several participants of the film – director Robert Aldrich, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and star Kirk Douglas – the most vocal about its flaws and unrealized potential. But for [...]

Last Thursday the Atlanta film community lost one of their most gifted and committed champions in bringing diverse and multicultural cinema to the city….and I lost a dear friend.      

After the critical and boxoffice success of ELMER GANTRY in 1960, another film, much smaller in scale and budget, came along that mirrored the latter film both thematically and in some of the plot details. It might have been merely a coincidence that ANGEL BABY appeared shortly after ELMER GANTRY in 1961 but it certainly beats the Burt Lancaster Oscar winner when it comes to curiosity value.

“When you are down and out something always turns up – and it is usually the noses of your friends.” – Orson Welles