Not many big screen luminaries can carry a picture all by their lonesome—and I do mean that literally. Yes, in the golden age of Hollywood, you had larger-than-life actors like Bogart, Stewart, Hepburn and the like, and, for that matter, heavyweights like Brando, Nicholson, Streep and DeNiro within the last few decades. But how often did you see one of them cast in a film that required them to be the sole onscreen presence—with no actors to play against—for most of the picture? That’s the challenge that faces Tom Hanks, star of Cast Away (2000), a Robinson Crusoe story for the new millennium…
There are few pleasures as delectably savory to a discerning film buff as a finely crafted screenplay. Sometimes a movie can pass muster with less-than-stellar performances, so long as there's a tightly woven yarn worth its spool (case in point, Touch of Evil). But cover up a bad script with as many acclaimed thespians as you want (witness Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty in The Fortune, or most features churned out by Tinsel Town today) and it's still akin to polishing a turd. Luckily, Sleuth (1972) benefits from both: inspired acting a la Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine as well as a …
Good suspense knows no season. So while the chills and thrills of Halloween may be long gone, you can still send that tingle down your spine—and stimulate your cerebral cortex, too—by catching Strangers on a Train, Alfred Hitchcock's wonderfully twisted and disquieting rumination on man's dual nature. It's playing Thursday, Dec. 16 at 7 p.m. at Green Hills Public Library, located at 8611 W. 103rd St. in Palos Hills (visit www.greenhills.lib.il.us/calendar.htm for more info). The film stars Farley Granger as Guy Haines, a tennis pro married to Miriam, a bespectacled floozy (portrayed by an …
If you like your Hollywood war epics a bit on the sudsy side—with plenty of foamy surf washing over supine lovers locked in a passionate kiss—then From Here to Eternity (1953) is right up your harbor: Pearl Harbor, that is. And there's no movie more fitting to view on the 69th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor than this Academy Award winning flick, which will be shown on Tuesday, Dec. 7 at 10 a.m. in the lower level meeting room of the Oak Lawn Public Library (9427 S. Raymond Ave.). Directed by Fred Zinnemann and featuring an all-star cast that includes Burt Lancaster, Montgomery …
Ah, there's something about those sultry, sensuous actresses from Italy in the years following World War II. From Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida to Claudia Cardinale and Monica Vitti, Italian cinema has produced quite a zesty variety of gorgeous female thespians.
One of the most eye-catching of them all was Silvana Mangano, formerly a "Miss Rome" beauty pageant winner, whose good looks landed her a plum part in Bitter Rice (1949), directed by Giuseppe De Santis. Contrary to its title, this classic foreign flick will not leave a bad taste in your mouth. In fact, it's quite the savory and …
