Film #131: Vanishing Point

With a plaintive, desert-baked guitar acting as soundtrack, Richard C. Sarafian's existential action epic Vanishing Point begins at its end, with rust-speckled bulldozers rumbling through the morning light of a funereal California town apparently populated only by doddering old men with ancient hats. As helicopters dot the air, these earth-movers situate themselves imposingly in Main Street's

Film #121: Smokey and the Bandit

I can still vividly remember, as a 10-year-old Atlanta kid, first seeing Smokey and the Bandit. My parents had taken me to the Northeast Expressway Drive-In Theater on opening night (if you look at the top right hand corner of this blog, you can see a torn ticket from the theater). The film's star, Burt Reynolds, was then the number one box office attraction in the country, and nowhere was this

Film #113: The Outfit

Just look at this cast! Robert Duvall, Robert Ryan, Timothy Carey, Joe Don Baker, Karen Black, Richard Jaekel, Henry Jones, Bill McKinney (one of the villainous hillbillies in Deliverance), Sheree North and a very young Joanna Cassidy (maybe best known as the fleeing stripper replicant in Blade Runner)! They're all milling about in this blood-drenched 1973 gangster film that has Duvall and

Film #108: Grindhouse

The following is an interview conducted by the magnificent Dark City Dame of Noirish City about one of my favorite films of the 2000s:DarkCityDame: Let me start off by asking you this question: why did you select the film Grindhouse to be added to your list of 30 films from 2000 to the present?Dean: Grindhouse stands as one of the most unusual moviegoing experiences I've had in recent years. As a

Film #104: JCVD

I've never sat all the way through even one Jean Claude Van Damme movie. Not one. Bloodsport, Universal Soldier, Kickboxer, Street Fighter, even John Woo's Hard Target? Sorry. Missed 'em. I despise the conversion of video games to movies, so should I why waste my time hoping each one is gonna be good? So I went into JCVD with low expectations, even though I've been told by some very

Film #86: Rollerball (1975)

Remakes make me so angry. Let's take the redo of 1975's Rollerball. When one deigns to mention this, yes, over-the-top but still entertaining and meaningful film to people who don't know about IT, but DO know about John McTiernan's missed-the-whole-point, Razzie-nominated 2002 remake, you inevitably hear a groan. And then you have to explain "No, not that one---the GOOD one..." I must have

Film #84: The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three

I still remember sitting over at my friend Brian Matson's apartment, snacks in hand, as I ran across this movie's opening credits. I'd always remembered the title: The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three. But somehow I missed this bloodcurdling juggernaut as a free-so-freeeee filmgoing child of the 1970s. But, here, in the 1990s, sitting in my friend's living room, I was struck by one thing first

Film #78: Coogan's Bluff

1968's Coogan's Bluff, whether you've heard of it or not, is a deceptively historic movie. It brought Clint Eastwood out of the western milieu he'd been so well-known for through his TV series Rawhide and his Spaghetti Western cycle with Italian director Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad & The Ugly), and into the streets of U.S. cities like New York (

Film #69: Streets of Fire

1984's schizophrenic sci-fi-tinged action musical from writer/director Walter Hill marked the beginning of the filmmaker's downward slide. Hill was once the heir to the Peckinpah throne, the action master of 80s classics like Southern Comfort, 48 HRS, and The Long Riders--and let's not forget his 70s classics like Alien (as producer and co-writer), The Warriors, Hickey and Boggs (as writer), and

Film #55: Sharky's Machine

All Atlantans of a certain age have a soft spot for this Burt Reynolds movie that, like it or not, remains one of the best ones ever shot in the ATL. I think it's a lotta fun and probably Reynolds' finest directorial outing. It's adapted from Georgia author William Diehl's best sellerabout Tom Sharky, an Atlanta homicide detective obsessively tracking a local mobster (a slimy Vittorio Gassman).

Film #30: Electra Glide in Blue

It's a strange feeling to write about Robert Blake movies now, after so much has happened to him in his personal life. But, all that aside, if you think about it, Blake had a long and fascinating career in movies. Under his real name Mickey Gubutosi, he was Mickey in Hal Roach's Our Gang series of short films. He went on to play Little Beaver, the Native American sidekick to Red Ryder (Bill

Film #24: Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)

If you're looking for the greatest car chase movie in history, I’ve got it. It’s not The Fast and the Furious, or Bullitt, or The French Connection, or The Italian Job or The Seven-Ups. And it’s not the crappy Nicholas Cage remake that bears this movie’s title. It’s H.B. Halicki’s 1974 drive-in masterpiece Gone in 60 Seconds. The title refers to the time it takes for this movie’s thieving