Peter Yates's 1968 cop drama has its existentialist pretensions, but there is something seductive about its strained seriousness and Steve McQueen's intentionally stoic performance as a San Francisco police detective on the trail of a murderer. A couple of key action sequences boost the film's stature, the most memorable of which is a vertiginous car chase that Yates almost approaches as a dance. ...
The only one of August Wilson's plays to be filmed (and for television, at that), this 1990 Pulitzer Prize-winner is an amazing piece of work. Adapted by Wilson and directed by Lloyd Richards, who staged it on Broadway, the play deals not just with racism and its effects but with the ongoing legacy and curse of slavery on modern blacks. Set in 1920s Pittsburgh, the story deals with the arrival of ...
Contains Four Classic Feature Films: PEARL OF DEATH (1944) The master detective must solve a series of horrible murders involving busts of Napoleon and a missing gem that has caused murder and misfortune since the days of the Borgias. THE SCARLET CLAW (1944) Holmes and Watson journey to Canada to attend a meeting of the Royal Canadian Occult Society. Before long, they are ...
Elvis looks sleek and cool in Speedway, a decided improvement over the pasty indifference he displayed in his middle-era range of pictures. The movie itself is standard Presley formula, with the King again playing a race-car driver, this time in trouble with an IRS agent (Nancy Sinatra) over his taxes. (There's even a production number about taxes. Argggh.) On the plus side, a bunch of ...
The poet, vocalist, and songwriter Gil Scott-Heron is both the descendant of the African griots and the forefather of rap. In the early '70s, he boldly proclaimed that "the revolution will not be televised," and in the '80s he warned us of the "New World Order" with his prophetic and satirical single, "B Movie." The gifted filmmaker Robert Mugge filmed the controversial artist in performance ...