(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) Joel and Ethan Coen’s finest films abound with whimsy and larger-than-life kookiness, but misanthropic wit just isn’t their forte. With The Ladykillers, an update of the 1955 black comedy classic that starred Alec Guinness as a creepy criminal genius, the writing/directing duo attempt to enliven their skewed absurdity with…

(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) One of Citizen Kane’s few equals, Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game is a gorgeous, gracefully astute critique of pre-WWII French aristocracy. Renoir, using luscious deep-focus cinematography reminiscent of Welles’ classic, details the facetious games of love played by both the upstairs (i.e. rich) and downstairs (i.e. servants) guests…

(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) Throughout his extensive career, Stephen King has habitually attempted (in novels such as The Dark Half and Misery) to confront the relationship between the artist and his work, and that thematic preoccupation once again comes into play in David Koepp’s Secret Window. Adapted from a King novella, the film…

After the back-to-back successes of The Pink Panther and its sequel A Shot in the Dark, Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers – perhaps thinking that anything they immortalized on film would be uproarious – re-teamed to make the largely improvised The Party, a middling comedy that plays like leftovers from the Panther films. Sellers stars…

“Give me ten men like Clouseau and I could destroy the world!” rages police commissioner Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) about his blundering French inspector in the second Pink Panther film A Shot in the Dark. What writer/director Blake Edwards should have given this wacky film, however, was a bit more of the pink feline. Where’s the…

Southern exploitation flicks never enjoyed the popularity or critical respect received by their urban African-American counterparts, but Phil Karlson’s Walking Tall is about the closest the genre ever came to mainstream success. Shown endlessly on TV during the ‘70s and early ‘80s, the 1973 film (very, very loosely based on a true story) is a…

What made Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau so brilliantly funny was not simply all those perfectly calibrated pratfalls, but rather the looks that followed each of the sleuth’s gaffes – with wide eyes and pursed lips, Clouseau always looked slightly embarrassed and eager to ignore his own clumsiness by pretending that nothing ridiculous had just occurred.…