David Thomson is one of our finest living writers, period. He just so happens to work in the field of film criticism, yet his prose sings as marvelously as any acclaimed work of fiction. Each book he releases is an event for cineastes, including his latest … although it is about the movies’ archenemy. In … Continue reading Reading Material: Short Ends 2/5/17
A sequel to Liane, Jungle Goddess from one year earlier, Nature Girl and the Slaver presents — with a generous use of seashells — the continuing adventures of its cut-rate female Tarzan. Played by Marion Michael, the white-skinned, blonde-haired Liane — or Diane, as the English dub of this German/Italian co-production calls her — lives … Continue reading Nature Girl and the Slaver (1957)
Arriving a full decade after producer Dino De Laurentiis’ 1976 monster hit, its too-little, too-late sequel, King Kong Lives, was DOA at the box office. Director John Guillermin returned; audiences did not. The entire landscape of cinema had changed in that 10-year gap, and it shows in the new film’s opening. As if an acknowledgment … Continue reading King Kong Lives (1986)
Although the book world has chronicled the making of unmade movies for decades, only recently has cinema itself caught on. Now, documentaries of Films That Might Have Been include Lost in La Mancha, Jodorowsky’s Dune, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau and, for the purposes of this review, The … Continue reading The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened? (2015)
What I remember most about seeing Octopussy in the summer of 1983 is that my overprotective mother actually took me, then 12, and my 9-year-old brother to see a movie titled Octopussy. This was, after all, a woman who forbade us from rewatching Grease 2 because it was “too racy,” and yet here was a … Continue reading Octopussy (1983)