Movieline Online

Between the 4th and 5th installments of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, Robert “Freddy” Englund wound up scoring the role of his dreams. Pitched as a modern horror update to the classic Gaston Leroux novel, The Phantom of the Opera (1989) was filmed on recycled sets with a rushed schedule that took advantage of the then-popular Budapest tax breaks. Bookended with a pair of modern-day scenes, but mostly working within a period setting interrupted with flashes of gore straight out of the slasher genre, the film vacillates between a classy Hammer Films-style and Fangoria extremism. What should have been a complete disaster – and was a box-office dud – wound up as a vibrant and vicious retelling of an oft-repeated story. Lifting elements from the source novel, direct film adaptations and De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise , director Dwight Little ( Halloween 4 ) gives the film an unexpected bump in quality right out of the gate and isn’t afraid to emphasize the more artistic...

I imagine every filmmaker also considers themselves a movie fan . But when they succumb to the temptation to make a movie about the movies, things can get dicey. Tarantino, for example, seems to have lost himself in self-reflexive homages whose only function is to validate his inspirations. Meanwhile, back in 1985, Woody Allen took a right turn into pure fantasy with The Purple Rose of Cairo , a tender yet tragic story of the golden age of cinema brought to life…quite literally. Living hand-to-mouth during the Depression, Cecilia (Mia Farrow) finds escape from the drudgery of a boring job and a bad marriage at the local movie theater, which projects exciting, romantic and heroic exploits that provide a sort of temporary amnesia. One evening during her third or fourth screening of The Purple Rose of Cairo , starring charming up-and-comer Gil Shepherd (Jeff Daniels), the character he plays, Tom Baxter, steps right out of the screen and sweeps her off her feet. Multiple repercussio...

Much like its main character, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) is deceptively dangerous. With a title and setting that suggests an inspirational ode to the wonders of a private school education, director Ronald Neame’s film (adapted from the novel by Muriel Spark) is instead a frightening profile of a woman whose abuse of power and politics in the classroom is a corrupting influence on all those around her. All the more shocking is the culprit behind this scandalous state-of-affairs: one Maggie Smith, currently the Dowager Countess of Grantham on Downton Abbey . Once the viewer adapts to the idea of Smith as the haughty, desirable Jean Brodie, a well-traveled connoisseur of the arts who passes on her love of culture to her students often at the expense of other academic pursuits, the story becomes a tragedy in the making…but exactly whose tragedy is the real question. Brodie, as a character, is a fascinating mix of contradictions, professing her commitment to her students wi...