Eric Henderson

If The Best Years of Our Lives emerges as a more contemporary-seeing film than almost anything else to which its ingredients could compare, it’s because of how it wrestles with the burden of patriotism. The nation’s problems are right there in plain sight, just as clear as cinematographer Gregg Toland’s typically precise deep-focus shots.

The sequel to Grease is not much more than a remake, wherein every minute detail is nothing more than an attempt to pilfer the magic of the first film.

Maniac Cop is the type of movie that you would want to watch through the slits in a sewer grate, only its execution sits perched well above its scummy aim, and the end result is that you feel guilty for wishing for something more perverted.

William F. Claxton’s film is a radically dull riff on the nature-run-amok genre, utilizing what must’ve felt at the time like the only animal not yet exploited to scare audiences. But scares are exactly what the filmmakers didn’t get.

Though Sisters is an undeniably tight homage to Hitchcock from an obviously indebted De Palma, I am still inclined to place it at least a tier below the likes of Dressed to Kill and Body Double.

Throughout, Pennebaker’s camera moves in as close as it can to capture every moment of doubt, disappointment and rage in Stritch’s face. That even still viewers debate whether Stritch was playing up the drama of the moment for the cameras only underlines how deftly Pennebaker’s brief and unassuming film resides at the heart of the interplay between work, art, and performance.

Varda captures the fairy-tale essence of early-’60s Paris with a vivacity and richness that rivals Godard’s Breathless.

I Confess ultimately reveals itself to be one of Hitchcock’s most successful examinations of the tension between public image and private turmoil.

The progression of Ozu’s style seems to parallel that of Jacques Tati, who moved from the mutable likes of M. Hulot’s Holiday into the glass-cut inflexibility of Playtime.

Even the most desensitized, ghoulishly amoral gleaners of deviant cinema can’t just stare down the nastiness on display in Cannibal Holocaust and just shrug it off.

Benny’s Video is a smug, contemptuous, passive-aggressive attack on the dehumanizing effects of media, without even the common decency to offer shrill sensationalism to punch up its subsequently feckless, reactionary, pomo assertions.

The Apple is an Old Testament movie in more ways than one, and its relentless bad taste is sure to appeal to the same audience that won’t even realize they’re being slapped in the face.

Grey Gardens remains one of the greatest and possibly only disaster movies that clearly benefits from not having seen the moments of reaping.

A bald rehash of Jaws, only with the Moby Dick elements played up even further, Orca isn’t a cheap thrill (producer Dino Di Laurentiis was also the man behind the idiotic-but-exhilarating King Kong remake), but it sure does seem like it’s in a rush to finish.

The Bellboy clearly sets a standard of self-involvement and examination in Lewis’s work that is so successfully hermetic that it scarcely needs the approval of the audience.

Inge’s scenario unravels alarmingly once the two would-be lovers start to drift apart thanks to Deanie’s nervous breakdown and the simultaneous (almost psychically connected) market crash of 1929, but the first half of the film is a tour de force of deferred urges, contortion acts of awkward intimacy, and the thrill of adolescence.

Back to the Future stands up on its own as a well-oiled, brilliantly-edited example of new-school, Spielberg-cultivated thrill-craft, one that endures even now that its visual effects and haw-haw references to Pepsi Free and reruns seem as dated as full-service gas stations apparently did in 1985.

At its best, Poltergeist III recalls that surreal mix of DIY ingenuity and narrative ineptitude that mark some of Lucio Fulci’s lesser efforts. At its worst, well, it’s just another soulless, hacky-tacky horror sequel.

Vincente Minnelli’s most acclaimed musical, Meet Me in St. Louis is a fresh breath of stale air, a tart ode to nostalgia.

Ultimately, The Fury is a film about pre-pubescence by a director whose work had finally reached the level of confidence reflecting a post-pubescent talent. The best of both worlds, baby, and barely legal.