"Divorce: A Contemporary Western" is a 1998 ensemble drama starring a number of talented character actors: Elias Koteas (of "CSI: NY"), Christopher McDonald (Shooter McGavin in "Happy Gilmore"), Wendie Malick (from "Just Shoot Me" as well as the classic HBO show "Dream On"), Denise Crosby ("Star Trek: The Next Generation") and Terry Kiser (the dead …
Continue reading “Divorce: A Contemporary Western” (1998), “Twisted Love” (1995)
While generally dull and pathetic, "The Gamble" is just campy enough to qualify as drunken so-bad-it's-good entertainment. Shot on location in Venice, Verona and lush stretches of French and Italian countryside, "The Gamble" is a dead-earnest 19th century period piece, brimming with carriages, horseback chases, fencing matches along moats and castle rooftops, and aristocrats sporting …
Yes, I ordered this movie solely because of the title, which stuck out like a sore thumb as I perused imdb.com's list of every movie ever made. Though released in the Czech Republic in 2006, it was acquired by Los Angeles-based Seminal Films in 2010 and released on DVD in the US; as such, I …
Although "Shogun Assassin" was on my movie wish list Google Doc for several months, I never officially ordered it, nor did any of my loved ones or dear friends that have access to the list. So I am at an utter loss as to how it arrived at my doorstep a month ago. It must …
"You could live a long time and never see anything as awful as ''Fever Pitch,''' begins Janet Maslin's November 1985 New York Times review of director/writer Richard Brooks' final film. While she's not entirely wrong, I am saddened that there is not a wider audience for this movie, at least among camp/cult film lovers. I …
Continue reading Richard Brooks’ “Fever Pitch”: The Erratic End to an Erratic Career
Imagine you're an insecure, unimposing male freshman at a school dominated by forthright, often angry women. Overwhelmed by your regular academic schedule, by the often humorless discourse in your psychology class (in which you are the only male student), you enroll in a film studies course, where you hope your goofy pluck will endear you …
Continue reading Critic-Proof Wackiness: The Films of Charlie Loventhal
Since this blog is primarily about films not on Netflix, that should not exclude films that were on Netflix for a significant time and are now floating through the ether, looking for new distribution deals. Netflix has an annoying habit of telling viewers, last minute, that anywhere between 10 and 50 films available for streaming …
Continue reading No Longer on Netflix: “Divorcing Jack” and “Enter the Ninja”
After the financially struggling Cannon Films came under the ownership of Israeli producers/cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, in 1979, the duo quickly boosted its profits by producing--and tirelessly promoting--schlocky, low-budget exploitation pictures. The model worked, and until the company's demise and takeover by an MGM affiliate in the late 1980s, it released a slew …
"Fighting Mad" (1976), the third film directed by Jonathan Demme ("Silence of the Lambs," "Rachel Getting Married"), and the only one of his films not listed on Netflix, has little of the quirky, whimsical touches that Demme suffused later efforts with. He would prove to be more at home with the small-time eccentrics that populated …
"Club Life," the mid-1980s saga of a young, cocky club bouncer's rise, fall and redemption (written and directed by Norman Thaddeus Vane), is the first movie I collected for this blog (off Amazon.com) that I decided to keep. I'd been curious about it since grade school, when I read a one-out-of-four star review in "Rating …
Continue reading “Club Life” and the Oeuvre of Norman Thaddeus Vane
Hidden Films 