Based on George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s stage play, Dinner at Eight never transcends its theatrical roots, but that’s not such a bad thing considering how many delectable performances director George Cukor extracts from his illustrious cast. Focused on the events surrounding a hoity-toity dinner party being organized by Millicent Jordan (a shrill Billie…

Though utilizing many of the aesthetic conventions that define J-horror thrillers, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s films are, at heart, psychological meditations on dislocation and alienation in which the chasm between life and death narrows as modern man’s isolation increases. In Séance (loosely based on Mark McShane’s novel Séance on a Wet Afternoon, also the basis for a…

With reverential wink-wink allusions to its classic horror film predecessors and director Joe Dante’s trademark cartoony vibe coloring the ominous action’s edges, The Howling may not be as polished or effective as John Landis’ 1981 An American Werewolf in London, but it’s still a perverse, satirical contribution to the oft-maligned werewolf genre. Beginning with a…

Whereas the kids in Jeff Blitz’s Spellbound measured their self-worth via their final place in the National Spelling Bee’s standings, the dancing fifth-graders of Marilyn Agrelo’s Mad Hot Ballroom – while nonetheless fixated on an upcoming city-wide competition at the World Financial Center – primarily find a sense of collective community and inter-gender understanding through…

If The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars had an ugly baby, it would look a lot like Krull, a cheesy fantasy/sci-fi hybrid that, as a young kid, I wasn’t able to tolerate beyond the first excruciatingly lame fifteen minutes. Twenty years later, I wish I’d followed my younger self’s example. Helmed by Peter…

In Unleashed, Danny (Jet Li) is a literal human attack dog, trained by his mobster boss/father/master Bart (a maniacal Bob Hoskins) to remain obedient while wearing his collar, and to mercilessly maim and kill when his metal neck restraint is removed. It’s a pulpy premise of near-ludicrous proportions, and it gets even sillier when Danny,…

Jean-Pierre Melville introduces Alain Delon’s character in 1970’s Le Cercle Rouge just as he did in 1967’s Le Samouraï – with the actor slumbering on a bed. Such a gesture not only links Melville’s two Delon-embodied protagonists as kindred alienated antiheroes, but immediately marks the director’s second-to-last film as yet another of his cooler-than-cool existentialist…