Christopher Saunders

LATEST ARTICLES ( 659 )

• Fail Safe

  

  "You make death an entertainment...that can be played in a living room."Sidney Lumet's Fail Safe (1964) suffered from awful timing. Released the same year as... Read more

  Posted on 21 July 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Spaghettis Galore! The Five Man Army/Red Sun

  

  TCM treated us to a fusillade of Spaghetti Westerns yesterday. It's always fun to visit that wonderfully eccentric subgenre, which offers unique pleasures even... Read more

  Posted on 20 July 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Medium Cool

  

  "All good people deplore things at a distance."Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool (1969) is a unique cinematic happening. Wexler found his fictional drama colliding... Read more

  Posted on 19 July 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Another Nice Mess

  

  The President of Amnesia and his loyal hyenaTelevision lore holds that Richard Nixon hated The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour so much that he pressured CBS to... Read more

  Posted on 17 July 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Cimarron (1960)

  

  serves as a bridge between Anthony Mann's '50s "adult Westerns" and his historical epics. A remake of the 1931 Best Picture winner, it's an ambitious but... Read more

  Posted on 16 July 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Law and Jake Wade

  

  "Now that I'm holding the gun, you're willing to give me my honor back!"One of John Sturges's less-heralded Westerns, The Law and Jake Wade (1958) offers an... Read more

  Posted on 15 July 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Final Days

  

  Even the best Richard Nixon movies suffer from one handicap: it's impossible to find someone, however talented an actor, who convincingly resembles our 37th... Read more

  Posted on 14 July 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• A Foreign Affair

  

  "Take my lovely illusions, some for laughs, some for tears."Billy Wilder interrupted his stream of postwar dramas with A Foreign Affair (1948). Read more

  Posted on 13 July 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Deadly Companions

  

  Sam Peckinpah graduated from television to features with The Deadly Companions (1961). Straightjacketed by domineering star Maureen O'Hara, he struggles to... Read more

  Posted on 13 July 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Bad Day at Black Rock

  

  One of John Sturges's best films, Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) cross pollinates several storylines. A Western noir with a socially conscious twist, it scores... Read more

  Posted on 07 July 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• A Clockwork Orange

  

  Many Stanley Kubrick films exist more as cerebral exercises than entertainment. Thus A Clockwork Orange (1971), which inundates viewers with ugliness posing as... Read more

  Posted on 05 July 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• RIP To Several

  I've shied away from celebrity obituaries lately, partly because there's been so many this year, partly because I'd rather this be a fun, if occasionally grouch... Read more

  Posted on 03 July 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Sting

  

  "Not only are you a cheat, you're a gutless cheat as well!"George Roy Hill scored a runaway hit pairing Paul Newman and Robert Redford with Butch Cassidy and... Read more

  Posted on 30 June 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

  

  "Don't let the bastards grind you down!"An early entry in the British "kitchen sink" genre, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) shot Albert Finney to... Read more

  Posted on 26 June 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Hireling

  

  (1973) tells a familiar story with unusual edge, with Robert Shaw and Sarah Miles providing remarkable performances. Both class and fractured personalities... Read more

  Posted on 25 June 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Free State of Jones

  

  (2015) is everything you'd expect from a Civil War film by the director of The Hunger Games. Gary Ross's epic is well-made but underwhelming, trading depth and... Read more

  Posted on 24 June 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Figures in a Landscape

  

  "I'd like to kick my bloody head right up into his Perspex!”Joseph Losey never shied from experimentation, however alienating or misguided. Read more

  Posted on 23 June 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• A Town Called Hell

  

  (1971) is a dismal Euro Western. An Anglo-Spanish coproduction, it mixes the silliness of the worst Spaghettis with monumentally miscast stars. Read more

  Posted on 21 June 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Custer of the West

  

  Hollywood's made many films about George Armstrong Custer and the Little Big Horn, some good, most forgettable. Custer of the West (1967) is a cheapjack epic,... Read more

  Posted on 20 June 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Luck of Ginger Coffey

  

  Long before The Empire Strikes Back, Irvin Kershner cut his teeth directing The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964). This downbeat Canadian drama covers familiar... Read more

  Posted on 20 June 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES