Films featuring
Eva Marie Saint

Superman Returns

[/types]]

For about the first forty minutes, Superman Returns looks and feels like a worthy successor to the 1978 classic, right up until the point Superman actually returns, then things start to go wrong.

The opening rescue, involving a space shuttle and airliner full of press (including Lois Lane, of course), is exactly what you expect and want from a Superman movie. If only you could say that about the rest of this film.

Continue reading

Grand Prix

[/types]]

Back in the 1960s, there was a particular genre of movies comprised of big budget epics with large international casts. Their sudsy stories usually centered on some larger-than-life subject. Another prime example would Guy Hamilton’s Battle of Britain. This film shares a lot of DNA with the later war epic. Both films work best when focusing more on the machines than the people inside them. When Grand Prix is in its element, using director John Frankenheimer’s car mounted cameras on the real circuits of the Formula One racing season, the film is exciting and visually spectacular. When the characters get out of their cars, strip off their racing suits and start talking to each other, the film runs into trouble.

Continue reading

North By Northwest

[/types]]

North By Northwest is one of Alfred Hitchcock‘s glossiest, most strictly entertaining films of his career. After the brooding study of obsession that was Vertigo, this film doesn’t seek to probe the depths of the human psyche. It’s content to be a superbly-crafted roller coaster and better for it.

Continue reading

The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming!

[/types]]

Those of us who grew up during the Cold War and remember it as a time of very real suspicion and fear probably look fondly upon this lightweight but not unsophisticated farce. It’s message that “Russians are people, too” probably seems a little simplistic to those too young to remember the times in which it takes place, but in its day, the concept was sufficiently radical to make an impact in the box office. It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the most popular American films behind the Iron Curtain.

Continue reading