In the 1970s, British director Ken Russell, who died yesterday at 84, was a genre unto himself.  Who else was making comparably outrageous and over-the-top films, one-of-a-kinders like The Boy Friend (1971)?  Perhaps the most bizarre screen adaptation of any Broadway musical, The Boy Friend is an intentionally self-conscious deconstruction of Hollywood musicals of the 1930s, while [...]

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If Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen are the two greatest directors from the heyday of the MGM musical (roughly between 1944 and 1958), then fellow directors George Sidney and Charles Walters are the two men who directed just about all of the beloved MGM musicals not helmed by either Minnelli or Donen.  Mr. Sidney gave [...]

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A lovely, underrated sleeper from Warner Brothers, Shining Victory is a drama about psychiatrists and scientific research set primarily in a sanitarium in Scotland.  The medical and treatment details are hopelessly dated and implausible, but the central characters and their relationship are moving and compelling.  And it’s beautifully acted by James Stephenson and Geraldine Fitzgerald as, respectively, [...]

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