Movieline Online

What Have You Done to Solange? may not be the giallo's finest hour - Bava and Argento serve as genre's bookends - but it certainly takes the category of sleazy Italian mysteries to a new level artful exploitation. Director Massimo Dallamano (who helped created the look of Sergio Leone's first two Dollars movies) takes all the tropes fans have come to expect - a black gloved killer, memory impaired witness and sexually charged murders - and whips them into a flashback frenzy of plot twists and character shifts. The opening scene finds Enrico Rosseni (Fabio Testi), the gym instructor at an all-girls Catholic school, sharing an intimate moment with one of his students, Elizabeth (Cristina Galbo), in a rowboat along the river Thames. But their lovemaking is interrupted when Elizabeth claims to have caught a glimpse of a brutal stabbing somewhere on shore. Loath to reveal what they saw to the police (underage sex and all, you know), the couple keeps quiet until even more...

Why the idea of a curated movie subscription service hasn't taken off yet is a bit of a mystery. I mean, Oprah managed to steer people's literary tastes for 15 years, but cinema somehow just can't duplicate the shared artistic experience. Netflix and other streaming services offer "recommendations" based on previous downloads, but that's trying to guess your preferences...not introducing you to something exotic, unusual or strange. When Arrow Video (already a popular cult label in Europe) launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund its expansion into the US market, it asked funders to pay up front for a relatively foggy release schedule of Blu-ray titles with no guarantee that they'd like what they were paying for. Much like the Criterion Collection, people were investing in the good judgment of Arrow's staff, counting on the fact that future restorations would be worthwhile viewing experiences...even if they might not have been a day-one purcha...

There are some people who will never watch a film adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. The author's very name has become associated with a "chick flick" stigma that, while apropos in some respects, earns a quick dismissal from most of the male population almost immediately...except those who begrudgingly admit Alicia Silverstone was hot in Clueless . And Sense and Sensibility (1995) is unlikely to change their minds. Because Austen's world, no matter how cleverly actress/screenwriter Emma Thompson adjusts it to fit our own, requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. And while the male species seems just fine justifying the existence of aliens, zombies and 25-foot sharks, the Y chromosome seems to balk at the that idea women were once reliant on men for every social and financial necessity. Or, at least, they don't find the idea very entertaining onscreen. After the death of her husband leaves his entire estate to a child from another marriage,...

Thanks mostly to the critical prestige his films bring to the studios, Woody Allen has had the sort of creative freedom other directors only dream about. That and an impressive work ethic have helped him pump out a movie a year since the release of Annie Hall in 1977. With Shadows and Fog (1991), once again Allen digs deep into his box of cinematic inspirations, marrying a beautiful black-and-white tribute to German Expressionism with his typically self-absorbed cast of characters. It's an experiment in broad humor, romantic philosophy and political paranoia that never quite works, but certainly looks pretty while doing so. Allen takes over lead actor duties as Kleinman - yet another take on the actor / director's cowardly putz persona - who is coerced into hunting the foggy streets for a serial strangler. While he and his fellow citizens run in circles, various other characters unwittingly enter the fray. Irmy (Mia Farrow), on the run from a traveling circus and her ...

Released just one year after the Watergate scandal, Scorpio (1973) fits comfortably into the modern-day espionage mold, one in which secret agents are just as suspicious of their own organizations as they are of the enemy's. Burt Lancaster stars as agent Cross, a seasoned pro with contacts around the world, specializing in pulling off assassinations that create chaos in all the right places. His understudy is a sophisticated Frenchman, Jean "Scorpio" Laurier (Alain Delon), so named for his specialty: hunting down the hunters when the agency needs to clean house. And Cross has just made the list. Accused of being a double-agent, Cross leaves his wife (Gayle Hunnicutt) and goes on the run, using his accumulated smarts and sources to stay one step ahead of CIA director McLeod (John Colicos) and his army of ill-prepared government stooges. Eventually it comes down to whether the master has taught his pupil enough to track him down and finish the job. Directed by Mich...

It’s ridiculously ironic that, thanks to companies like Blue Underground, I’ve probably written more comprehensive reviews for the work of Jess Franco than John Ford, Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg combined. Of course, Franco has the edge in quantity , with some 200 films attributed to the director under various pseudonyms. But quality : that’s a word not often associated with any of his productions. So it’s surprising when you stumble upon titles like Justine (1968) and Eugenie (1969), a pair of psycho-sexual soft-core shenanigans based on the writings of the 17th century author / pornographer / sadist Marquis de Sade. Franco freely admits an affinity for the writer, whose name lends a naughty sort of legitimacy to the director’s usual exploitation oeuvre. But the most frustrating thing about Franco is he makes it difficult write his work off completely; there are always elements that hint at the soul of an artist lurking inside the filmography of a hack. Justine is the...

Loosely based on Shakespeare's patriarchal tragedy King Lear , 1954's Broken Lance stars Spencer Tracy as Matt Devereaux, a tyrannical rancher who defends his self-created kingdom with vicious authority from enemies both within and without. The three sons from his first wife (led by Richard Widmark as the eldest) bear the brunt of his constant disappointment and discipline. While the fourth, Joe (Robert Wagner), earns a more liberal hand; a situation which leads to a dangerous amount of brotherly resentment. After taking the law into his own hands by burning down a mining operation that was poisoning a nearby stream, Matt finds himself in a legal bind and is forced to turn over ownership in the ranch to his sons. But it's Joe who does the hard time to keep his father out of jail. And after his release, these complicated family ties get pulled into an even tighter knot. To be honest, there's little about Broken Lance (1954) that deserves special mention. As J...

At this point in home video collecting history it's pretty hard to surprise anyone. Especially horror fans, who often wind up buying the same newly remastered title year after year just to get that rush of rediscovery again. In these desperate times it's nice to run across something that's a true rarity, pleasantly demented and absolutely worth the hype. But that's exactly what Blood Rage is: a latter-day slasher shot in Jacksonville, FL that's just as gory, goofy and spectacularly fun as anything in the most well-rounded geek's closet collection. After witnessing his mother's make-out session at the local drive-in, young Terry goes on a violent rampage, chopping up another amorous couple a few doors down. But it's his twin, Todd, who takes the blame, which promptly sees the 8-year-old shipped off to a mental institution. Flash forward ten years: Todd finally escapes from his unnecessary incarceration and heads back to their family apart...