title: The Killing function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close(); <br> studio: M-G-M Home Video MPAA rating: NR starring: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Elisha Cook Jr., Marie Windsor, Jay C. Flippen, Ted DeCorsia release year: 1956 film rating: Four-and-a-Half Stars reviewed by: Bill Warren By 1956, Stanley Kubrick had made two feature films, Fear and Desire (which he came to hate) and Killer's Kiss. He was eager to make movies his own way, but which were also commercially successful, so it was his good fortune to encounter James Harris, who wanted to team up with an ambitious director and produce his films. Harris found the novel Clean Break by Lionel White, an intricately-structured tale of a carefully-planned race track robbery.

title: Just Cause function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close();  studio: Warner Home Video MPAA rating: R starring: Sean Connery, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Capshaw, Blair Underwood release year: 1995 film rating: Three Stars reviewed by: Abbie Bernstein ‘Just Cause’ is a thriller full of plot twists. It’s difficult to discuss the film’s effect even in broad strokes without giving the game away; any mention of the ultimate message is liable to tip the outcome. The set-up (pre-twists) is this: Bobby Earl Ferguson (Blair Underwood), a young man of humble beginnings who nevertheless attended an Ivy League university, is arrested in his small Florida hometown and charged with the rape and murder of a child. Eight years later, Bobby Earl’s devoted grandmother (Ruby Dee) persuades Harvard law professor and famed death-penalty foe Paul Armstrong (Sean Connery) to take up the condemned man’s death-row appeal. Armstrong does some digging and becomes convinced that Bobby Earl was railroaded by a confession that was tortured out of him. Arresting officer Tanny Brown (Laurence Fishburne) is ...

title: Bonnie And Clyde function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close(); studio: Warner Home Video starring: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons release year: 1967 film rating: Four Stars sound/picture: Three Stars reviewed by: Abbie Bernstein 32 years later, it’s hard for newer audiences to imagine the impact ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ had on its initial release. However, it’s easy to see the film’s influence in most of the outlaw-couple movies that have come down the pike in its wake. Director Arthur Penn and writers David Newman & Robert Benton have turned what could have been a sordid, squalid tale into the stuff of romantic tragedy. As most folks know, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were a real couple who hooked up during the Depression and went on a bank robbery spree throughout the U.S. Southwest. As presented here, they want to impress each other, they want to escape the degrading, monotonous poverty that seems their only other option and they want fame. However, they’re far from natural-born ...

title: The First Deadly Sin function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close(); studio: Warner Home Video starring: Frank Sinatra, Faye Dunaway, David Dukes, James Whitmore release year: 1980 film rating: Two and a half stars reviewed by: Abbie Bernstein ‘The First Deadly Sin’ is a police procedural thriller that is notable mainly as Frank Sinatra’s last big-screen starring vehicle (his appearance in ‘Cannonball Run II’ doesn’t really count). Based on a best-seller by Lawrence Sanders, it’s not hard to see how the material could be gripping in literary form. However, director Brian Hutton and screenwriter Mann Rubin don’t quite manage to make three-dimensional figures of either Sinatra’s anguished NYPD Sgt. Edward X. Delaney or his nemesis, David Dukes’ crafty Daniel Blank.

title: Badlands function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close(); studio: Warner Home Video starring: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates, Ramon Bieri release year: 1973 film rating: Three and a half stars reviewed by: Abbie Bernstein The phrase "banality of evil" might have been coined just to describe the main characters in director/writer Terence Malick’s ‘Badlands.’ The film zigzags between being creepily compelling and exasperatingly slow, just as its male lead Kit (Martin Sheen) whipsaws between casual homicidal mania and aw-shucks ‘50s optimism. Malick based his tale on the real-life saga of multiple murderer Charlie Starkweather and his underage girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate, though there are suggestions of a number of cinematic influences as well, notably ‘Bonnie and Clyde.’ The narrator here is Holly (Sissy Spacek), a 15-year-old cheerleader transplanted from Texas to North Dakota when she meets 25-year-old Kit. Kit treats Holly as though she’s something special, which is a first for her, especially as her possessive widowed father (Warren Oates) barely lets her out on her own. ...