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Perhaps Robert Frost put it best when he said, "A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer." Once, practicing law was considered a worthy, honorable career. No longer. In a bloated legal system where technicaliti...

A ragtag column of men, many dressed in full armor and others lugging an enclosed sedan chair, wend their way down a treacherous mountainside path. This is the first image we see in Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God. He holds it for n...

When Alien was first released during the summer movie season of 1979, science fiction films were all the rage. The trend had been started two years earlier with the unexpected box office success of Star Wars, and, by 1979, anything even remotely co...

I have always felt that Fellini is an acquired taste, and it’s one for which I never developed a ravenous appetite. While I value the director’s flamboyancy, his work has never connected with me in the same way as the output of many of the...

In today’s climate, it may no longer be in vogue to offer a laudatory assessment of Woody Allen’s 1977 Oscar-winner, Annie Hall but, dammit, this is a really good movie and doesn’t deserve the opprobrium it sometimes receives because of ...

Since its 1979 release, Apocalypse Now has been widely regarded as one of the most powerful and influential films about the Vietnam War. Were it not for the final thirty minutes, I might agree. There's little doubt that the bulk of the movie, whi...

Bad News Bears may be the most entertaining remake of the year (thus far), but that's less a statement of praise than it is a condemnation of this class of movies. With a script co-credited to Bill Lancaster, who penned the original 1976 screenpla...

Being There, Hal Ashby’s 1979 adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski’s novel, is a delightfully dark comedy that, despite a cynical bent, offers viewers a good time. At the heart of Being There’s popularity is a recognition that even the most simp...

Call Camera Buff a case of art imitating life. Although director Krzysztof Kieslowski admitted that this film doesn't tell his own story ("I made films because that was my profession, and I was too lazy or too stupid or both to change..."), it wi...

It's probably unfair to blame the failure of Carrie on Steven King. While it's true that the script, written by Lawrence D. Cohen and based on King's novel, is a mishmash of clichés and poorly-realized characters, director Brian De Palma des...