Films featuring
Ernest Borgnine

From Here to Eternity

[/types]]

In lesser hands, this movie would have been one long soap opera, but this adaptation of James Jones’ rather bawdy novel manages to wring real human drama out of its characters instead. The real miracle is that the filmmakers managed to tame the rather explicit novel enough to appease the censors and still stay true to the spirit of the story. If all you remember or know about this movie is Burt Lancaster’s famous clinch on the beach with Deborah Kerr, then you owe yourself a viewing of this movie, which has a lot more to offer.

Continue reading

The Flight of the Phoenix

[/types]]

Back when I was a kid, this movie used to play on the Saturday afternoon movie about every third week and, being a boy with a jones for all things aviation, I ate it up. Of course, back then I simply got off on the idea of turning a crashed airplane into a new smaller airplane. As I got older, I came to appreciate the movie for what it was: a deeply insightful drama about men under crisis, couched in the format of an action adventure.

Continue reading

Ice Station Zebra

[/types]]

”[types
[/types]“]

On paper, Ice Station Zebra must have looked like a slam-dunk. The director of The Great Escape helming a film based on the work of the author of The Guns of Navarone. Unfortunately, Ice Station Zebra doesn’t possess the untethered sense of adventure found in either of its ancestors.   

That doesn’t mean that this film isn’t enjoyable. When I remember seeing the film in my youth, my primary recollection is of the fairly rigorous authenticity of the submarine sequences. Sub buffs can certainly enjoy the film on that level. There is also some dazzling widescreen photography in some of the at-sea scenes as well, at least until the sub reaches the North Pole and they discover that it’s a sound stage.

Continue reading

The Wild Bunch

[/types]]

It’s interesting to think that 1969 saw two landmark westerns that covered much the same territory in vastly different ways. They were both set against the twilight of the old west and both dealt with train robbers for whom time had fatally passed them by. While Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was a breezy, nostalgic comedy, The Wild Bunch is a mostly somber contemplation of violence and mortality.

Sam Peckinpah‘s signature film may have been shockingly violent for its day, but its actually fairly tame in that department compared to modern action movies like Die Hard. However, if the graphicness of the violence is not up to modern standards, the sheer body count of this picture, as well as the callous randomness of the death, is still capable of shocking.

Continue reading