Author Archives: Don Druker

Grainy, often out of focus, and rather pedestrian, this 1974 documentary on Janis Joplin is really a good deal of concert footage spliced together with a surprisingly meager amount of “candid” interview material and home movies. With no reference to Joplin’s life, apart from some coy joshing between her and assorted interviewers (plus a bit […]

Ron Rice died in 1964, which was especially tragic for experimental filmmaking in America because just about everyone who’s ever seen one of his films thinks he was a genius. This 1960 film is the first of his three completed works, shot in San Francisco and starring Taylor Mead, the epitome of the underground nonactor […]

A film by nouveau roman author Alain Robbe-Grillet, whose screenplay for Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad stood the cinematic world on its ear. I haven’t seen this 1968 feature, but it should be interesting. With Jean-Louis Trintignant and Sylvie Bréal. In French with subtitles. 95 min.

Frank Capra’s first feature as director stars Harry Langdon as a man returning from World War I and searching a big city for a girl (Gertrude Astor) he knows only through correspondence. Along with the Capra-directed Long Pants, this 1926 comedy was Langdon’s best work. 78 min.

Bruce Lee lays it on thick for the catharsis-seeking crowd. Another martial arts masterpiece (1971), directed by Hong Kong regular Lo Wei. 99 min.

One medium-sized step for the porno flick (1972), as the Mitchell brothers do for filmed sex what Sam Peckinpah did for filmed violence. The film is actually not episodic (tough as that is to believe about a porn feature); nor does it lack a certain charm and good humor. Technically way ahead of most other […]

Gualtiero Jacopetti’s largely faked Italian shockumentary (1963) gave the world the pop hit “More” but little else, charting some of the more peculiar eating and courting habits around the world. The basic idea was put to brilliant use by Luis Buñuel in his acid documentary-cum-travelogue Las Hurdes (Land Without Bread) (1932), but Jacopetti probably didn’t […]

Ineptly directed by Arthur Hiller, this 1972 adaptation of the durable stage musical is repeatedly subverted by bad framing, sloppy cutting, and compositions so amateurish that most of the time the audience is left wondering exactly which characters they’re seeing. Peter O’ Toole acts the dual roles of Miguel de Cervantes, awaiting trial by the […]

Peter Sellers is a Los Angeles Jewish lawyer who drops out and turns on in this sly, slapdash film (1968) written by Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker, and directed by the TV graduate Hy Averback. Inconsequential and a bit silly, the film is notable for its famous recipe for brownies. With Joyce Van Patten. R, […]

1 hour 26 min