Movieline Online

THE FLICKS: Just as the history of art can be traced from crude cave drawings to the finely detailed work of Michelangelo and Renoir, so too can we follow the development of the Hollywood disaster movie in the form of Irwin Allen’s The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, the producer’s two greatest contributions in the often embarrassing but always entertaining genre of movie star spectacle and miniature scale destruction. Airport (1970) may have launched the disaster craze, but Poseidon (1972) perfected it. Cast with an eclectic mix of has-beens (Shelley Winters), new blood (Gene Hackman) and familiar faces (Roddy McDowall), every line of dialogue is as subtle as a slap in the face, and all delivered at full scream. I’m not kidding, these people had to be hoarse when this film wrapped! But, as with modern-day examples like The Day After Tomorrow, the larger-than-life concept is the real selling point, as Allen’s effects and design crew stage the thrilling (by ’72 standards) c...

THE FLICKS: Director Enzo G. Castellari doesn’t attract the same kind of attention as his fellow genre-workhorses in Italian cult cinema circles. Perhaps because his films never went overboard on gore (like Fulci) or caught on with U.S. distributors (like Leone). But a trio of releases from Blue Underground aim to rectify that situation by delivering three of the director’s Euro-Crime films – Street Law, The Big Racket & The Heroin Busters – in their usual fan-friendly fashion. On the whole, Castellari’s work is indistinguishable from other films of the period, fast-paced knock-offs of Death Wish and The French Connection. But the action scenes, which vacillate between Peckinpah-inspired slow-motion and whip-pan intensity, are cinematic creations unto themselves. Castellari puts his camera right in the thick of things – tumbling weightless off a cliff, between the headlights of a muscle car, or behind the flashlight of a menacing thug. There’s an energy to his choice of angles, a d...

THE FLICK: Paul W.S. Anderson has become the whipping boy for bad cinema. According to internet gripers, he’s blown a couple of videogame adaptations (Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil), ruined two franchises at the same time (Alien vs. Predator) and nearly killed Kurt Russell’s career (Soldier). Personally, I’ve never understood the unbridled hatred Anderson’s name inspires; his films have all been mediocre efforts with moments of ingenuity, but nothing to burn a cross over. Especially when you consider Event Horizon, a film to which even the fanboys begrudgingly give their respect. Filled with an interesting collection of actors who can actually act (Sam Neill, Laurence Fishburne, Kathleen Quinlan), first-class production design, great photography (by the late Adrian Biddle of Aliens) and one audacious concept (Hellraiser in outer space...an idea the Hellraiser franchise eventually got around to on its own eventually), there’s a consensus that this is Anderson’s one true cinematic accompl...