Hell in the Pacific

I love these sorts of tiny little films from accomplished filmmakers. This is two actors (literally no more than two at any point in the film) in a battle of wills and wits on a beach. It's the sort of thing that, just at the sound of it without any mention of names, comes off…

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Point Blank

John Boorman, supposedly based on a positive review from Pauline Kael for his first film Catch Us if You Can, started receiving offers to work in Hollywood, and he attracted the attention of Lee Marvin who, at the height of his fame, was offered complete creative control over the adaptation of The Hunter by Richard…

Catch Us if You Can

I've got to admit that I resisted John Boorman's first film, an effort to replicate the success of The Beatles' A Hard Days Night by fellow British Invasion band the Dave Clark Five. It was hard to figure out what was even going on with five, young British men that all kind of looked alike…

The Wild Bunch

#4 in my ranking of Sam Peckinpah's filmography. Peckinpah met great success with "Noon Wine", his television film starring Jason Robards and Olivia de Havilland, and he was able to secure funding for his grand, revisionist western, The Wild Bunch. John Wayne saw this and bemoaned the death of the myth of the Old West.…

Major Dundee

#11 in my ranking of Sam Peckinpah's filmography. More than your typical Western, but less than the great, Civil War epic, Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee is one of those movies I wish was significantly longer, like Anthony Mann's The Furies could be improved in a similar way. By all accounts, it was much longer in…