Action & Adventure

Movies about people who crash or are stranded in a remote part of the world are my catnip. Survival thrillers like The Lord of the Flies, Gravity, The Sands of the Kalahari, The Revenant, and The Edge are some of my favorites. These stories never fail to wake up the 12-year-old boy who still hangs out in the basement of my soul. In no time he’s wide awake, breathless to see what happens next as the hero fights to stay alive. And sitting right next to him is the 72-year-old ma

In actor Al Pacino’s autobiography Sonny Boy—a moving and worthwhile read, by the way—he tells the story of how he was in L.A. one day when he passed a movie theatre that was showing a classic gangster film. That film was Scarface. Made in 1932, it starred Paul Muni and was directed by Howard Hawks. It’s a violent tale about a gangster’s rise and downfall during prohibition. Pacino had never seen the movie before, but growing up his grandfather had raved about how much he lov

One of my favorite authors is Dashiell Hammett, a master of hardboiled suspense and detective fiction. The Maltese Falcon is his most famous creation. But his first novel Red Harvest is legendary in its own right. Hammett’s novel is about a nameless private detective whose job brings him to a small town that’s overrun by crime and corruption thanks to two rival gangs. As the detective begins to clean-up the town, in a clever twist he doesn’t do it on his own, but by manipulat

One of the greatest films ever made is Greed. Produced in 1924 by the brilliant director Erich von Stroheim, it concerns three people whose lives are destroyed when they become obsessed with the money that one of them wins in a lottery. The original version of the film ran over eight hours, but MGM brutally cut it down to two-and-a-half hours and the rest of von Stroheim’s masterpiece has been lost. The film gives Bogart one of his greatest roles as Fred C. Dobbs. Another gre

Of all the actors I love in movies made in post-World War II America, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan and Burt Lancaster are three of my absolute favorites. Their on-screen charisma and intensity, their willingness to portray complex heroes as well as antagonists with frightening hearts of darkness, always draws me to them. No matter what the film or the genre, I find those three actors compelling. Burt Lancaster made many great movies that I could easily review here: The Sweet S

Director William Friedkin passed away in 2023. Among the tributes that many of today’s younger filmmakers paid to him was to acknowledge the incredible feat of his career in the 1970s when he made two certifiable American classics back-to-back—1971’s The French Connection, followed two years later by The Exorcist. With those twin blockbusters to his credit, Friedkin had the creative and box office muscle to make anything he wanted for his next project. He chose to adapt a Fre

In the 1980s, during the heyday of video store rentals, one film company stood out as the king of B moviemaking—The Cannon Group. If fast, trashy, violent and often dumb action movies were what you wanted, Cannon delivered. Titles such as American Ninja, Tango and Cash, and many of the Death Wish sequels starring Charles Bronson were some of their low-brow classics. On occasion, however, Cannon swung for the fences, trying to make something better, something prestigious. And

There are certain movies I love that I call Guilty Pleasures—movies that—for whatever reasons—are maligned for their exploitive subject matter, poor productions, or for just being low-brow affairs. But I love them just the same, for any number of reasons. One such guilty pleasure for me is Race with the Devil. I first saw it at a drive-in theatre in 1975, and its cheap B-movie action thrills reached out from the screen, grabbed hold of me, and have never let me go. What’s it

The name Alfred Hitchcock is synonymous with movies that are both thrilling entertainment and great art. That’s a rare feat that few filmmakers have been able to achieve even once. But in Hitchcock’s case, he did it many times over an astonishing 50-year career. From his inventive use of visuals to startling set pieces, his films brim with the artistic vitality of a master film storyteller. The Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures. Of the Hitchcock films that I lov

I remember my father trying to watch Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan when it came out in 1998. Soon after it started, he turned it off. The opening sequence of the D-Day invasion at Normandy was too much for him. As a World War II vet, he found it too violent. Too real. Too historically accurate in its depiction of the slaughter of human life that happened that day. A full-tilt fantasy about how movies fought the war and saved the world. For anyone with a similar react

There was a time when movie theatres were so unlike many of the faceless, homogenous ones that we have today. The theatres of my youth were like churches to me—churches where a special kind of flickering magic happened. Even the modest theatres of the 1950s and 60s were grand, in their way. The bold colors on the lighted marquees. The ornate Art Deco flourishes on the carpets and walls. The movie screens that were hidden behind heavy curtains until it was time for the show to

Of the action movie stars who dominated the big screen during the 1960s and 1970s, there is one who was bigger, stronger, tougher, more imposing than any other. Before Clint Eastwood came along, that is. His name: Charles Buchinsky, a.k.a. Charles Bronson. With a weathered slab of a face and a muscled physique that looked like it was chiseled out of the Pennsylvania coal mine where he toiled as a child, Bronson stepped up and took care of business no matter what movie he was

I love books and movies about people marooned on a deserted island. More than just a tale of adventure, storytellers often use the idea of being trapped on an island as a metaphor for what it means to be or feel alone in life, desperately hoping to escape that solitude and find a way to connect with the world. For me, the movie Cast Away—made in 2000—is a terrific example of the island allegory at work. Tom Hanks gives a memorable performance as Chuck Noland—“no land”, get it

1968 was a monster year for movie lovers. Releases that year included 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rosemary’s Baby, Planet of the Apes, Night of the Living Dead, Monterey Pop, Once Upon a Time in the West…and the granddaddy of all modern crime-action movies, Bullitt. Directed by Peter Yates and starring Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn and Jacqueline Bissett, Bullitt is justifiably regarded as the film that gave birth to years of memorable Hollywood cop movies--from The French Connect

I love it when a filmmaker takes a calm, everyday setting—maybe even one that evokes a feeling of serenity and beauty—and suddenly reverses it and turns that calm into a deceptive snare from which there is seemingly no escape. That’s exactly the hook of the 1997 movie Breakdown, a terrific Hitchcock-like mystery that turns a road trip full of promise into a nerve-wracking ordeal filled with desperation and terror. Unlike other movies that often use the “road trip to hell” sce