The Train (1964)

A friend, Daniel St. Vincent, recommended checking out The Train (1964), a black-and-white WW2 action drama directed by John Frankenheimer (Seconds, Ronin) and starring Burt Lancaster. For some reason, with that title, I thought the majority of the movie took place on a train like Runaway Train or Unstoppable. Rather, the train is like a […]

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Elmer Gantry (1960)

Watching a few Burt Lancaster movies recently and I was contemplating him as an actor, how he fills up a frame with his tall, athletic physique and his garrulous, charismatic, confidence. Lancaster won the Oscar for Best Actor for playing the title role of Elmer Gantry (1960), based on the Sinclair Lewis novel, and it […]

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Underworld USA (1961)

I was in the mood for a classic black-and-white film noir that I hadn’t seen and selected Underworld USA (1961) because it was a Samuel Fuller film (of Pickup On South Street and Shock Corridor), which he directed, wrote and produced. On a New Year’s Eve in the back alleys of a city, a young […]

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Torn Curtain (1966)

It’s interesting exploring the titles in a director’s career that don’t get as much celebration, particularly the later period films by a marketed auteur like Alfred Hitchcock. I remember mainly reading about Torn Curtain (1966) from a book about Paul Newman my Mum owned and in Scorsese On Scorsese where the farmhouse sequence is cited […]

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