Star

Dec 11, 1989 — Previous rock-and-roll movies had been little more than showcases for the latest music, aimed at exploiting the youth market, cheaply made and melodramatic—then along came one of the most finely crafted films ever made about rock-and-roll.

Jun 25, 1989 — Three men seek shelter from the rain under the ruined gate of the ancient city of Kyoto. There is nothing to do but talk, about a topic which torments two of the wayfarers, who have just been witnesses in a...

Jun 25, 1989 — A thoroughgoing investigation of the terms “bravery” and “cowardice,” Stanley Kubrick’s early work offers far more than a mere “anti-war” statement, paring with almost surgical precision to the heart of the fear, hubris and mendacity that keep the war machine...

Apr 10, 1989 — In the Hollywood heyday of the ‘30s and ‘40s, America was synonymous with rip-snorting action-adventure movies. Audiences throughout the world thrilled to such classics as Gunga Din, The Sea Hawk, and Union Pacific. In the 1950s the Japanese made their...

Jan 11, 1989 — Thursday, March 2, 1944—the United States is in its third year of war with the Axis powers. More than 12 million Americans are fighting on various fronts; the German armies are being repulsed at Anzio and the newspapers have large...

Dec 5, 1988 — This existential thriller didn’t begin its life as a cannily trendy product of studio filmmaking, but rather as the very personal expression of the imagination of one of European art cinema’s greatest talents, Michelangelo Antonioni.

Sep 5, 1988 — A wild mixture of gangster thriller, slapstick comedy, and bittersweet romance, François Truffaut’s second film was one of the signal works of the French New Wave.

Apr 4, 1988 — Back in 1968 when The Producers made its debut, writer-director Mel Brooks was better known within the entertainment industry than by the public at large. His writing for Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows and the Get Smart television series,...

Feb 29, 1988 — Marx Brothers aficionados have argued for years over the relative merits of A Night at the Opera and the “purer” Marx movies such as Duck Soup. Certainly there’s no comparison on a point-by-point basis: Duck Soup is a classic of...

Dec 1, 1986 — Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is one cult film that has also won over the cultivated buff. As Peter Morris remarks (in his Dictionary of Films): “Though one of the subtlest films of the genre, containing little...