Tag Archives: classic-film-review

Classic Film Review: Pinter, Losey and Bogarde wind up the Clockwork Creepiness of “The Servant”(1963)

Posted on June 21, 2025 by Roger Moore

It’s been so long since I reviewed anything scripted by Nobel laureate Harold Pinter that I had to refresh my memory about the traits associated with the phrase “Pinteresque.” Let’s see, an “atmosphere of menace,” suspense and tension heightened by … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: A Brit Baby Boomer lost in His Own World — “Billy Liar” (1963)

Posted on June 17, 2025 by Roger Moore

Falling into “Billy Liar” is no easy feat, even for a film buff, over sixty years after it was released. It’s been included in more than one list of “the 100 Best British Films Ever Made,” albeit in the bottom … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: Streisand, O’Neal and Bogdanovich go Looney Tunes Madcap — “What’s Up, Doc?” (1972)

Posted on June 10, 2025 by Roger Moore

A handful of great filmmakers came to the movies as genuine cinema buffs. Truffaut to Tarantino, Godard and Schrader, Peter Bogdanovich to Park Chan Wook all were film fanatics, some even critics who found a path from taking notes and … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: Brando goes Godfather one last time for “The Freshman” (1990)

Posted on May 30, 2025 by Roger Moore

Brando skates! Maximillian Schell sings! Brando kisses Broderick! Bert Parks croons Dylan! And most amazingly of all, no wildlife, or actors, were actually harmed in the making of “The Freshman,” an old-fashioned PG-rated romp from 1990. Well, maybe the writer-director … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: A Dark Comedy of Class, Gimmicks and Great Critical Repute — “Kind Hearts and Coronets”

Posted on May 26, 2025 by Roger Moore

It is remembered for the grand stunt of casting the great Alec Guinness as eight members of a largely imperious and callous noble family, and making each so distint as to erase the label “gimmick” from what became a quintessential … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: MGM’s Blunt, if Belated Warning about Fascism — “The Mortal Storm”

Posted on May 17, 2025 by Roger Moore

The first time I pondered the “coincidence” of a classic film turning up on my TV at a particular moment in history was coming home from school in the ’70s and seeing the Cold War era gem “Seven Days in … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: “The Return of Martin Guerre,” the Original “Deep Fake”(1982)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Roger Moore

Before he became the French poster boy for “sexual predator,” Gerard Depardieu was the unlikeliest screen sex symbol of his era. Burly to the point of huge, played a soulful “Cyrano” and took on Jean Valjean in a TV version … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: It’s 2025 — Are we ready for What Cukor, Hepburn ,Tracy and Donald Ogden Stewart warned us about Fascism? “Keeper of the Flame” (1942)

Posted on April 28, 2025 by Roger Moore

Big speeches rife with “the F-word”– “fascism” — pack the third act of “Keeper of the Flame,” a mid-WWII MGM thriller that was a tad too anti-fascist for fat cat studio chief Louis B. Mayer. Those speeches also burden a … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: A Ken Loach dip into Dickensiana — “Black Jack” (1979)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Roger Moore

Ken Loach built his career on films of protest, depicting the oppressed of many places and many eras in their struggle against their oppressors. The Brit’s “socialist realism” was obvious from his breakthrough English working class classic “Kes,” with the … Continue reading →

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Classic Film Review: Ferrer, Huston and the Can Can — “Moulin Rouge” (1952)

Posted on April 9, 2025 by Roger Moore

The American master John Huston was an Oscar winning director and screenwriter, and no slouch as an actor. A bon vivant, boxer, horseman and at his richest, a member of the Irish landed gentry, he became Hollywood’s most famous Renaissance … Continue reading →

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