Oct 31 2003 THE HUMAN STAIN opens. Dir. Robert Benton. Fair to middling adapt. of Roth's insightful discourse on race, identity & self invention hobbled by the miscasting of both Anthony Hopkins as unfairly disgraced college dean & Nicole Kidman as his young rough trade lover.
Oct 31 1997 RED CORNER opens. Dir. Jon Avnet. A US businessman gets Midnight Expressed when his trip to China lands him in the slammer on a trumped up murder charge. Richard Gere reaches for action hero & courtroom grandstanding tropes in slick credibility stretching thriller.
Oct 31 1974 PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE opens in LA. Dir. Brian De Palma's classic Faust, Dorian Gray, Phantom of the Opera influenced rock extravaganza charting the misfortunes of nebbish songwriter who loses his girl, music & soul to Paul Williams' Mephistophelian record producer.
Oct 31 2020 SEAN CONNERY, Imposing, charismatic Scottish born actor who became the quintessential incarnation of Ian Fleming’s James Bond, dies in the Bahamas aged 90. “Choose your next witticism carefully Mr. Bond. It may be your last”.
Oct 30 1959 NO DOWN PAYMENT opens. Dir. Martin Ritt. Unrelenting, scalpel sharp, late 1950s human drama charting the economically stilted, unfulfilled, dysfunctional lives of 4 couples living on the installment plan in the manicured, cookie-cutter blandness of a CA sub-division.
Oct 30 1998 VAMPIRES opens. Dir. John Carpenter. An operatic, blood & entrails spectacle filtered thru a Western aesthetic with a wired James Woods heading up a Vatican-sanctioned group of mercenaries tasked with dismembering a blood lusting uber vampire & his acolytes.
Oct 30 1998 AMERICAN HISTORY X opens. Dir. Tony Kaye. Riveting, confronting portrait of urban racism with Edward Norton as reformed, newly paroled former skinhead neo-Nazi whose violent past comes calling when he finds his younger brother has joined a white supremacist gang.
Oct 30 1981 LOOKER opens. Wri./Dir. Michael Crichton. Albert Finney as plastic surgeon who attracts sinister cyber corporation's wrath when he starts amateur sleuthing into the gruesome deaths of his model patients. Sleek, insubstantial techno thriller co-starring James Coburn.
Oct 30 1987 THE HIDDEN opens. Dir. Jack Sholder. Pulpy, B-movie savvy sci-fi sleeper classic with LA cop Michael Nouri & a very strange FBI agent Kyle MacLachlan hot on the trail of homicidal, body-snatching alien parasite with a predilection for guns, rock'n'roll & fast cars.
Oct 30 1959 WALKING DISTANCE, classic ep.5 of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone airs on CBS at 10.00 p.m. Gig Young stars as NY ad exec whose home town stroll 25 years into the past brings him face to face with his 10 year old self. Nostalgic, deeply melancholic elegy to lost youth.
Oct 29 2004 RAY opens. Dir. Taylor Hackford. Selectively warts & all, period faithful, orig. soundtrack propelled portrait of R&B legend Ray Charles effectively mitigates its formal H'wood bio-pic conventions with Jamie Foxx's astonishing, barn-storming, Oscar-win. performance.
Oct 29 1999 HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL opens. Dir. William Malone. Slicker, more gross-out than scary remake of William Castle's cultish, 1958 no budget horror quickie centering on 6 strangers who are promised $1mil if they can survive 1 night in a ghost filled former lunatic asylum.
Oct 29 1993 FATAL INSTINCT opens. Dir. Carl Reiner. Armand Assante crosses the line between silly & stupid as a cop/lawyer with serious femme fatale issues in a mostly leaden, Naked Gun-inspired spoof of erotic noir thrillers stretching from Double Indemnity to Basic Instinct.
Oct 29 1982 Q THE WINGED SERPENT gets limited release. Dir. Larry Cohen. Two NYPD cops & opportunistic smalltime crook face off against flying dragon-like lizard terrorizing the city. Schlocky, witty, fast-paced, gore-laden B movie classic. Bravura perf. from Michael Moriarty.
Oct 28 2011 THE RUM DIARY opens. Dir. Bruce Robinson. Colorful uneven adapt. of gonzo Hunter S. Thompson’s unpublished autobiographical novel set in Puerto Rico 1960 with Johnny Depp as a dissolute, hard drinking ex-NY reporter looking to expose the island’s rampant corruption.
Oct 28 2005 THE LEGEND OF ZORRO opens. Dir. Martin Campbell. Historically compromised, stultifyingly inferior sequel to 1998's winning original finds Antonio Banderas' masked swashbuckler salving his marital woes with action scenes bordering on cartoon buffoonery.
Oct 28 1994 STARGATE opens. Dir. Roland Emmerich. In Egypt dweeby scientist James Spader & military hardass Kurt Russell travel thru newly excavated time portal to ancient slave world lorded over by despotic, pharaoh-like alien. Flashy, Spielberg-lite sc-fi epic becomes BO hit.
Oct 27 1995 COPYCAT opens. Dir. Jon Amiel. Well worn genre gets a fresh coat of atmosphere & gripping terror as agoraphobic crim. psychologist Sigourney Weaver & cop Holly Hunter pool their resources to catch a psycho obsessed with copying past serial killers' grisly handiwork.
Oct 27 1995 LEAVING LAS VEGAS opens in LA & NY. Dir. Mike Figgis. A wasted writer slowly drinking himself to death & a jaded Vegas hooker find fleeting comfort in their common misery. Nicolas Cage in mesmerising, Oscar-winning tour-de-force alongside terrific Elizabeth Shue.
Oct 26 1989 KILL ME AGAIN opens. Dir. John Dahl. Married couple Kilmer & Whalley topline stylish, tightly wound, Coen Bros-worthy neo noir crime thriller centering on a double crossing femme fatale, her psycho boyfriend, a low rent Vegas PI & suitcase full of stolen Mob money.
Oct 27 1965 THE CINCINNATI KID prem. in New Orleans. Dir. Norman Jewison replacing a fired Sam Peckinpah. Steve McQueen as cocky, hot-shot, Depression-era poker player looking to burnish his rep by challenging Edward G. Robinson's ageing, reigning champ to winner-take-all game.
Oct 27 1964 THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY opens. Dir. Arthur Hiller. Paddy Chayevski's excellent adapt. of W. Huie's biting anti-war comedy/satire set in pre D-Day London with James Garner as opportunistic, combat averse Navy Lt. & Julie Andrews as his not so prim love interest.
Oct 27 1955 REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE prem. in LA. Dir. Nicholas Ray's brooding, mid '50s LA-set portrait of alienated youth with a mannered James Dean working "the method" as troubled new kid in town oozing angst from every pore. A dated albeit culturally iconic film of its time.
Oct 26 2007 BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD opens. Dir. Sidney Lumet’s sublime swan song. Philip Seymour Hoffman & Ethan Hawke as 2 financially strapped brothers whose desperate, deadly heist gone wrong detonates a powderkeg of suppressed familial secrets, lies & betrayals.
Oct 26 2001 K-PAX opens. Dir. Ian Softley. An enigmatic stranger claiming to be an extraterrestial from the planet K-Pax is placed in the care of a psychiatric facility's benevolent doctor. Superb Kevin Spacey & Jeff Bridges headline marvellously entertaining, under-rated gem.
