When Three Kings, a movie about the 1991 Gulf War, was released in 1999 no one knew that there would be a subsequent war with Iraq, beginning in 2003. Yet the film is certainly prescient about what was to come. In defending America’s decision to leave the region, one character asks another if he’d like, [...]

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While Brokeback Mountain breaks your heart, Beautiful Thing, a tiny English movie without stars, is the most feel-good gay love story ever filmed. It may be one in a long line of coming-out stories, but the romance that unfolds between the central characters is the cure for their unhappiness rather than its cause. The movie [...]

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Set in Greece during the 1912 Balkan War, Isle of the Dead receives its grotesqueness partly from its setting and partly from its director, Mark Robson, whose resumé boasted other horror flicks of the time. The story that unwinds on the island of quarantined plague victims is more disturbing than even its superficial impression would [...]

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Despite its predecessors, Love Me Tonight is one of the best first movie musicals. The inter-class love between Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald blossoms before audiences to the soundtrack of Rodgers and Hart’s original score, providing the perfect mix of familiar and fresh. And thanks to the expertise of director Rouben Mamoulian, the most essential [...]

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On July 28, 2008, John DiLeo will begin hosting a video series based on his book, Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery (published by Hansen Publishing Group) on his classic movie blog, Screen Savers Movies. A new video of DiLeo talking about each movie in his book will be released daily, Monday-Friday, from July [...]

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