Movieline Online

An obscure title from Universal sure to satisfy film noir fans, 1946's Black Angel stars Dan Duryea as Martin Blair, a lovesick alcoholic songwriter whose ex-wife winds up murdered in her penthouse apartment. The guy fingered for the crime is sent to death row, but his wife, Catherine (June Vincent), searches desperately for clues that will clear his name. Blair agrees to help, taking her under his wing as a nightclub act to get information on the owner, Marko (Peter Lorre), who was also at the scene of the crime. Together they race the clock to stop an innocent man from facing the electric chair. Based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich (whose Phantom Lady has a similar ticking clock structure), director Roy William Neill's picture has a great time doling out alibis and red herrings. Of course, Lorre's character is the prime suspect and the actor delivers his deadpan performance with cigarette-dangling panache. But Duryea, who played mostly psychos and heavies throug...

While Alien and Star Wars provided low-budget filmmakers with a tough aspirational template, Raiders of the Lost Ark was an even harder act to follow. With its exotic locales and sprawling cast of characters, Spielberg and Lucas' creation didn't lend itself to a quick rip-off. Romancing the Stone managed to successfully recreate the formula to a degree, but most other attempts ( Treasure of the Four Crowns, King Solomon's Mines ) were obvious also-rans. 1986's Jake Speed tried to rip off Raiders and Romancing the Stone in equal measure, sporting at rough-n-tumble titular hero whose pulp adventures in a popular series of novels turn out to be based on his actual escapades as a hero-for-hire. Taking on a new case involving white slavers selling pretty L.A. girls in the wilds of Africa, Jake (played by producer and co-writer Wayne Crawford) goes toe-to-toe with a colorful Cockney villain (John Hurt) while protecting his client from assorted guns, knives and w...

Still required reading in trendy high school curriculums everywhere, Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five chronicles the semi-autobiographical time-traveling adventures of Billy Pilgrim, a rather passive protagonist who jumps between his past, present and future with jarring irregularity. Narratively, it makes for a wonderful metaphor on memory and how life experiences cumulatively impact our future selves. And, considering the editorial time-shifting abilities inherent in cinema, it should all make for a terrific movie. But for some reason George Roy Hill's 1972 adaptation fails to fire the right neurons. Vonnegut's dissertation on Billy's trials and tribulations is all present and accounted for, including time spent as a prisoner of both the Nazis and a race of intergalactic aliens called the Tralfamadorians. And cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek delivers a look and feel equivalent to the best European art films on display at the time. Make no mistake...