Bruce Eder

The result of a three-and-a-half-year quest, this Oscar-nominated drama is a high-water mark in the career of one of Hollywood’s most distinguished artists.

Spencer Gordon Bennet’s The Atomic Submarine has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. It is easy enough to dismiss the film as kiddie matinee fare but, really, what science fiction–adventure movie from the 1950s wasn’t intended, at some level

Laurence Olivier’s Richard III was the last and best of the trilogy of Shakespeare films directed by and starring the late actor and filmmaker. Shot in sixteen weeks during late 1954 and early 1955, Richard III was the final, crowning glory of the

Ronald Neame’s Hopscotch has the distinction of being the only “feel-good” realistic spy film ever made. As the movie walks a fine line between serious drama and satirical comedy, and between topicality and escapism, it beguiles the viewer with

In addition to being his funniest film, The Horse’s Mouth is the most personal, and touching, of all Alec Guinness’ movies. Apart from starring as the brilliant but bedraggled artist Gulley Jimson, Guinness also adapted the Oscar-nominated screen

Mario Monicelli’s Big Deal on Madonna Street is that genuine rarity in popular culture: a satire that not only helped kill off one movie genre, but started a whole new subgenre in the process. The film, released in Italy in 1958 as I Soliti ignoti,

If Akira Kurosawa is the John Ford of Japanese samurai dramas, then The Sword of Doom director Kihachi Okamoto is the samurai film’s Sam Fuller. A specialist in action films, with a particulat accent on violence and raw characterizations, Okomoto

The importance of Two English Girls lies in its sheer vitality. The film is an extraordinary cinematic conjuring trick in which Truffaut draws the viewer both physically and visually into his own personal pleasures. He does this on a multitude of lev

The evolution of Jason and the Argonauts began in the late 1950s, after the initial success of 20 Million Miles to Earth. Harryhausen and his producer, Charles Schneer, decided to get away from doing “monster-on-the-loose” stories and try somethi

Richard Lester’s Help! was the first of a new kind of rock-and-roll movie which altered the shape, face, and form of rock music. Before Help!, most of the rock-and-roll genre movies were simple, self contained films conceived in the narrowest possi