The Tailor of Panama

I think this film almost works. Almost. Not quite, though. There's a saggy middle section that just drags the whole affair down without building up the tension like it probably should that the rest of the film can't get past. However, the first third and final third are actually quite adept at pulling together this…

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Zardoz

The drugs have kicked in. Zardoz seems to be something of a poster-child for the hedonistic, drug-fueled, portentous, and overstuffed version of pre-Star Wars 70s science fiction, and I don't hate it. After the success of Deliverance, that went so far as to get a Best Picture nomination from the Oscars, Boorman took his cache…

The Lady in Ermine

#30 in my ranking of Ernst Lubitsch's filmography. Well, at least I learned what ermine is, that's neat. That being said, I was actually somewhat enchanted with That Lady in Ermine, Ernst Lubitsch's final feature film that he was unable to complete due to his untimely death, a task that Otto Preminger, who had completed…

That Uncertain Feeling

#28 in my ranking of Ernst Lubitsch's filmography. Lubitsch, after the critically positive but less than stellar financial receptions of his previous few films, moved into independent production along with business partner Sol Lesser to film a remake of one of Lubitsch's earlier films (Kiss Me Again, which is lost). Having been a producer on …

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife

#27 in my ranking of Ernst Lubitsch's filmography. There's a lot of commentary about why this first collaboration between director Ernst Lubitsch and the writers Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder doesn't quite work, and a lot of it has to do with the casting of Gary Cooper as a millionaire who keeps marrying women that…