I thought “The Boys in the Band” would be a campy ridiculous movie, redeemed only by its groundbreaking status as one of the first mainstream films that dealt with homosexuality.  Instead I found it to be thoughtful, serious, well-written, and brilliantly-acted.  Its dubious reputation is the result of homophobic film reviewers (the dark side of [...]

1968-born director Brett Morgan makes two excellent choices in creating “Chicago 10″: to avoid the use of 60′s songs in the soundtrack, and to employ a fluid style of animation for much of the picture. Ultimately though he proves himself to be unwilling to grapple with the complexities and emotional underpinnings of the events of [...]

(photo from K. Silam Mohammad’s lostintheframe.blogspot.com) “The Pawnbroker” stars Rod Steiger as a Holocaust survivor who becomes a pawnbroker in Spanish Harlem in the early-60′s. This places the action 20 years out from WWII, roughly the same time that has passed since the first Desert Storm — not a long time.  It must have been [...]

A charming time-capsule starring another charismatic but forgotten actor, Dane Clark (not the execrable Dane Cook), alongside a young Sidney Poitier, “Go Man Go!” features a bebop score by Slim Galliard, who was a favorite of Jack Kerouac. I wonder what the connection with “On the Road” is — I remember the phrase “Go Man [...]