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The original Godzilla (or Gojira, as its die-hard adherents refer to it), released in Japan during 1954, officially ushered in the Japanese movie monster craze that would, in due time, become a subgenre all to itself. When the film reached U.S. shor...

There’s no debating that Journey to Italy (also commonly called Voyage to Italy – the official Italian title is Viaggio in Italia) is an important film, but is being “important” enough to make a motion picture “good?” Loosely based...

The recipient of eight Oscars (including Best Picture), On the Waterfront represented a defining moment in the careers to two key participants: actor Marlon Brando and director Elia Kazan. A gritty, uncompromising look at union corruption on the d...

For several years now, the Alfred Hitchcock canon available in video stores has been incomplete. While most of the Master of Suspense's great works have been easily obtainable, Rear Window has been conspicuous by its absence. (This became a sourc...

In the 1940s and '50s, star power drove movies. Staples of cinema like plot, character, and photography were often of secondary importance to who topped the marquee. Well-known actors could draw large crowds to a bad movie, while obscure name...

When considering world-famous Japanese filmmakers, the first names that likely come to mind are Kurosawa and Ozu. Not far behind them, however, is Kenji Mizoguchi, whose career spanned more than 30 years beginning with silent films in 1923 and...

The most popular cinematic export from Japan is inarguably the samurai movie. Whole books have been devoted to the genre, and more than one mail-order video business has made a tidy profit shipping samurai tapes and DVDs around the world. The mos...