Category: Film

Entire new frontiers in boredom were opened up by this MGM whopper from 1959, produced at the then staggering cost of $15 million (hardly enough to pay for a mid-80s Dudley Moore vehicle). It swept both the Academy Awards and the nation’s box offices, though if you can keep both eyes open through its whole […]

John Steinbeck’s novel of a marine biologist in love with a prostitute, set along the Monterey waterfront of the 1940s. David Ward, who wrote The Sting, adapted and directed, using story elements from Steinbeck’s sequel, Sweet Thursday. With Nick Nolte, Debra Winger, and Audra Lindley; photographed by Sven Nykvist.

2 hours 22 min

1 hour 50 min

The plotting of this 1978 biopic is contrived, and director Steve Rash’s feeling for Buddy Holly’s time and place is virtually nil, but Gary Busey’s performance is astonishing—less as an interpretation than as a total physical transformation. Since Holly’s life offers no cinematically gripping conflicts, the filmmakers are obliged to invent some, and they tend […]

1 hour 24 min