Woman in the Dunes (Suna no Onna)
A captivity film about entire cultures. And the best sand photography ever filmed.
1960s
Dr. Strangelove
By employing, perverting, and redirecting the rules of wartime filmmaking to primary targets of his own design, Kubrick creates an encompassing and indispensable work of satire, penetrating as Orwell, snide as Vonnegut, enigmatic as Heller.
That Touch of Mink
Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much was Day’s proof of concept, which based on her further career everyone seemed to ignore. That Touch of Mink, a film that makes Cary Grant look like he’s not an actor, is just the kind of spineless jaunt that I hate to associate her with.
A Fistful of Dollars: Slow-Burn to Greatness
A frontier samurai movie. The best stares in the business.
Hello Dolly!
Hello, Dolly! can’t get passed Streisand. It’s a solo concert trying to be a movie. Character is more a windfall than a result of the plot, which concerns Dolly pulling so many strings to get what she wants that it’s not even clever – it’s so decadently convenient that she seems to have the writers on her side.
Robin and the 7 Hoods
This moral naysaying is shockingly against type for a film bursting with Copacabana headliners. Remember that these are the guys hired explicitly to hold a mic in one hand, a drink in the other, and to generate a fantasy of wealth and well-meaningness that makes thousands of less charming people mistake clubbing for having fun. Robin and the 7 Hoods is drastically less endearing than any of its hoods.