Category: Saturday Night Cinema

Tonight’s wonderful Saturday Night Cinema feature is the delightful comedy, Heaven Can Wait. THE SCREEN; ‘ Heaven Can Wait,’ an Amusing Comedy of Manners, With Don Ameche, Gene Tierey and Charles Coburn, Opens at Roxy By BOSLEY CROWTHER Published: August 12, 1943 It is an amusing anomaly that Twentieth Century-Fox displays a particular fondness for…

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema selection is Lonelyhearts (aka Miss Lonelyheart) (1958) starring Montgomery Clift. Clift is, as always, superb. The film also stars Robert Ryan, Myrna Loy, Jackie Coogan, Dolores Hart, and Maureen Stapleton in her first film role. Stapleton was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as for a…

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema is in honor of Memorial Day weekend. Tonight I am screening the great war-time film, “In Which We Serve.” At least five film credits go to Noel Coward, and each is well-deserved. It’s Noel Coward at his peak. Simply brilliant. Few morale-boosting wartime films have retained their power and entertainment value…

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema feature is Alfred Hitchcock’s all-talkie thriller, Murder, starring Herbert Marshall. Hitchcock’s tenth feature, a crime drama set in the theater, is one of his best British films. Herbert Marshall: Sir John Menier Nora Baring: Diana Baring Phyllis Konstam: Dulcie Markham Edward Chapman: Ted Markham Miles Mander: Gordon Druce Esme Percy: Handel…

I return to my favorite genre for tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema selection, the noir mystery, Sleep My Love. Claudette Colbert is very good in this wife-in-distress thriller. This noir mystery thriller was produced by Mary Pickford and her husband Buddy Rogers, and directed by Douglas Sirk. Claudette Colbert stars as Alison Courtland, a wealthy New…

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema film is the dark melodrama Toys in the Attic, starring Geraldine Page, a singular talent and arguably one of the greatest of the 20th century. At least I think so. Toys in the Attic is a 1963 American drama film starring Dean Martin, Geraldine Page, Yvette Mimieux, Gene Tierney and Wendy…

Clouzot was already nearing his mid-fifties when he directed the then-25-year-old Bardot to arguably her greatest performance. Viewed today, La Verite is a striking reminder of the talents of two distinct and iconic artists, with Clouzot’s carefully thought-out compositions perfectly capturing Bardot at her most vulnerable and most brilliant.

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema is the quintessential British murder mystery, Green For Danger. Starring Alastair Sim and Trevor Howard, the 1947 film lays “deftly humorous hands on the subject of murder.” I love bringing to Atlas these little cinematic gems, rarely seen and screened even less.

Laurence Olivier plays a young Londoner implicated in a brutal murder. According to the rules of British law, he is permitted 21 days of comparative freedom from the time of the first hearing to the time of trial — provided he does not leave London. As the three weeks pass, Olivier falls deeply in love with girlfriend Vivien Leigh, who at first believes in his innocence.

A little (actually a lot) comic relief for shruggers. Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema feature is a Marx Brothers classic, “A Day at the Races” (1970). It’s vintage Groucho, Harpo and Chico. I am in Australia stumping for freeeeeeeeeedom.
A Day at the Races was the Marx Brothers’ follow-up to their incomparable A Night at the Opera. Groucho Marx is cast as Hugo Z. Hackenbush, a veterinarian who passes himself off as a human doctor when summoned by wealthy hypochondriac Emily Upjohn (Margaret Dumont) to take over the financially strapped Standish Sanitarium.

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema feature is Fort Apache the Bronx (1981), starring Paul Newman. Paul Newman plays a veteran policeman in this hard-boiled cop story. The men in blue are neither portrayed as heroes or brutes, but as “ordinary human beings who try to cope in a pressure-cooker.”
The film is a tough-talking street melodrama, both shocking and sorrowful, acted by Paul Newman and a huge cast with the kind of conviction that can’t be ignored.

George Bernard Shaw adapted his own play for the screen in this blithe film version of the romance between Caesar (Claude Rains) and Cleopatra (Vivien Leigh). Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra are merely Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle cast back into ancient times, with Caesar doting with admiration and burgeoning love upon Cleopatra.

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema is the first and best of three Hollywood adaptions of W. Somerset Maugham’s gut-wrenching Of Human Bondage (1934). Bette Davis as the vicious object of Leslie Howard’s affections is unforgettable: cruel and unworthy of such love — but then, aren’t most of us?

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema feature is an MGM musical, albeit an unusual one, directed by the great George Cukor, and starring Gene Kelly and Cole Porter music. I love an MGM musical and Cukor, Cole and Kelly… need I say more? Les Girls is the Rashomon of MGM musicals. “For its cast of exquisite performers, under George Cukor’s fine directorial hand, makes feminine ferocity about as charming as anyone could possibly want it to be.”

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema is the comedy classic, My Man Godfrey. Carole Lombard is illuminant and funny and wonderful. One of the landmark “screwball” comedies of the 1930s, My Man Godfrey offers the radiant Carole Lombard in her definitive performance as flighty young heiress Irene Bullock. It’s a screwball masterpiece, a “silvery romp.”

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema feature is Life at the Top. If you missed Room at the Top, I ran it back in June 2012 here. It is essential viewing. Life at the Top is a belated sequel to Room at the Top. John Blaine’s “angry young man” British novel was made into a film in 1959. Life at the Top is not as good as Room, but there are very good moments, and I am a big Laurence Harvey fan. And Harvey is back as Joe Lampton, the man-on-the-rise who in Room had given up true love in favor of a career-boosting (and antiseptic) marriage to his boss’ daughter.

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema is in memory of Ariel Sharon, RIP.
This star-studded four-hour masterpiece was produced and directed by Otto Preminger. Exodus is a 212-minute screen adaptation of the best-selling novel by Leon Uris. The film depicts the liberation of Israel as an independent nation in 1947.

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema classic is Leave Her to Heaven. Gene Tierney is exquisite, and her beauty is captured in such glorious colour. And Jeanne Crain is something to behold. What's interesting is that up until this film, the underrated Tierney was certainly considered the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, but not necessarily a world…

Repulsion.1 by jsyoon1289 Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema masterpiece is Roman Polanski's psychological thriller Repulsion. Forgive the Korean subtitles, but it was the only online version I could find. Polanski is, of course, a brilliant and singular talent, and I am a huge fan of his work. His early films are particularly painful, disturbing, and haunting….

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema is the film version of one of the truly great novels of the twentieth century, Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. It is thrilling to hear and see Rand’s great ideas on the silver screen. And the screenplay was written by Rand. Thrilling. I can think of no better way to spend your…

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is film classic, It Happened One Night, starring Clark Gable (yummy!) and Claudette Colbert. Frank Capra's merry romance classic won all five major Academy Awards for 1934. It is still fresh and snappy and great fun. I love Gable and he is superb. Below is the 1934 NY Times film review….

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema feature stars my favorite hunk o' man, Robert Mitchum. But star power abounds in the strangely facsinating "Secret Ceremony," with glam queen Elizabeth Taylor playing opposite the otherworldly Mia Farrow. "….this psychologically twisted tragedy begins when the boozy prostitute Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) encounters a young woman on a London bus. Cenci…

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema feature is the dazzling film noir masterpeice, Kiss Me Deadly. "Aldrich's annihilating masterpiece, one of the decade's key works." Regarded by many critics as the ultimate film noir, and by many more as the finest movie adaptation of a book by Mickey Spillane, Kiss Me Deadly stars Ralph Meeker as Spillane's…

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema feature was French film director's Jean-Perre Melville's last film, Un Flic (A Cop), starring Alain Delon, Richard Crenna and the impossibly beautiful Catherine Deneuve. The film is below the fold (scroll) — if you are not seeing the subtitles, click on the CC icon on the bottom right side of the…

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is Stanley Kramer's masterpiece, Judgment at Nuremberg. The blockbuster cast includes Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schell, and Judy Garland. "An eloquent snapshot of the way that the ground was shifting–in both the Nuremberg of 1948 and the Tinsel Town of 1961." After the end…

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema is an extraordinary film by Elia Kazan. I have been searching for it for some time: America, America. Elia Kazan, in my mind Holllywood’s greatest director, made this film based on his family’s experience under the dhimma of the Muslim Turks in interior Anatolia. It is the true story of his…

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema feature delivers another film noir classic, Notorious, starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains, directed by film giant Alfred Hitchcock. And it is indeed one of his best. Naziphobia unleashed! Love, morality and evil are given equal time in this Hitchcock thriller. This is the film, with “Casablanca,” that…

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is a rare little jewel, Outward Bound, starring the brilliant Leslie Howard. This unusual supernatural drama, based on a 1924 Broadway stage hit, concerns a disparate group of people who find themselves sailing to an unknown destination on a ship constantly shrouded in fog. Appropriate, no? 1930 NY Times Film Review:…

It's Saturday Night at Atlas, and you know what that means. Garbo! Boyer! Conquest! Greta Garbo is hypnotic as always, and Boyer as Napolean received his first Best Actor Oscar nomination for his peformance. Delicious. Conquest aka Marie Walewska was at the time the more expensive sound movie. The producer Bernard H. Hyman wanted it…

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema feature is The Lady Vanishes. "Vintage Hitchcock, with the pacing and superb editing that marked not only his 30s style but eventually every film that had any aspirations whatever to achieving suspense and rhythm." I think it's the best of Hitchock's early, British productions. "My favourite Hitchcock: The Lady Vanishes" The…

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is the vicious and still shocking  film noir crime drama, Kiss of Death. A taut thriller that is unusually attuned to its lowlife characters. Based in part on a true story, Kiss of Death is given a veneer of reality by being filmed on location in New York, per the insistence…

Tonight's Sautirday Night Cinema at Atlas is one of my top five Hitchcock films, Marnie. Many cinephiles consider it a lesser Hitchcockian effort, but they just don't get it. Taut, scary and sexy — icy cold Marnie's obsession with stealing and the hot hot hot hunky Sean Connery's obsession with Marnie is too good. It's…

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is one of my top ten. Groundhog Day is brilliant on so many levels. Funny on its face, it digs deep, posing existential questions. It is refreshingly profound. Comic genius Bill Murray is brilliant and clever as the cynical, jaded Phil Connors. "Half Capra and half Kafka" If you want to…

The best stage musical of all time and one of the most loved romances. I selected one of Hollywood's best-loved musicals for tonight's Saturday Nght Cinema — a special Passover treat, My Fair Lady, directed by the legendary George Cukor. The film stars Audrey Hepburn, the epitome of what every girl aspires to be, and…

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is a fantastic Howard Hawks film starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth, Only the Angels have Wings.  "A bizarre and gorgeous film to say the least, this masterwork (based on a story fragment written by Hawks in 1938 titled Plane from Barranca) embodies a fantastic range of opposite states…

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is a delightful rarity, The Lady in Question, starring the supremely divine Rita Hayworth and the hunky, swaggering Glenn Ford. This marks the first pairing of Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford, which is what makes the film worthwhile. The chemistry is obvious. It would be six years before these two blow…

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is Stella Dallas, produced by Sam Goldwyn and starring Barbara Stanwyck. This second film version of Olive Higgins Prouty's Stella Dallas is by far the best. The combined talents of Goldwyn, director King Vidor and star Barbara Stanwyck lift this property far above the level of mere soap opera. Stanwyck's heartbreaking…

 Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is the film noir classic (in exquisite Technicolor cinematography, no less), Leave Her to Heaven. And if you are an avid Gene Tierney fan like yours truly, this is Tierney at the height of her beauty and acting powers, as she plays one of cinema's most chilling psychopaths. Gene Tierney was…

Tonight’s Saturday Night Classic film is a masterpiece, the seminal The Bicycle Thief. Atlas Shruggers have long known I am an unabashed cinemaphile. I have loved old movies for as long as I can remember. Every day, I would run home to watch The 4:30 Movie, where classic films were broadcast sliced and diced to…

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is The First of the Few. It has so many great performances, most notably, the supreme Leslie Howard. Howard was active in anti-Nazi propaganda and was killed when his airplane was shot down by the Germans, who had thought that Churchill was aboard. 

The Saturday Night Cinema is Noel Coward's Design for Living, directed by the brilliant and deliciously sly Ernst Lubitsch. The play is more Lubitsch than Coward, and if you are an unabashed Lubitsch fan like me, you're in for a treat. I recently watched "To Be or Not To Be" again and it's as sharp…

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is from the brilliant Billy Wilder and stars the dazzling Marlene Dietrich in A Foreign Affair. "The German director and his fellow German leading woman have made this film from the soul. It's more about post-war Berlin. Jean Arthur's talent saves the day and provides the comic relief, but it's Dietrich…

Shocking as it may seem, tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema is actually less than 25 years old. But a great performance in a taut thriller is timeless, and Kathy Bates’ Oscar-winning performance is cray cray great. Bates has a field day in this role, and James Caan is the perfect foil. Adapted from a Stephen King…

I love Dietrich. She hated the Nazis and they hated her. And she was spectacular. This film launched Dietrich's career as a star in Europe. Blue Angel was directed by Josef Von Sternberg, who simultaneously made versions of the film in German and English. The plot features Lola, a nightclub singer who captivates the local…

What a film. What a film! Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is a masterpiece. It is as much a romance as it a spy thriller. Under the sublime direction of Alfred Hitchcock, it features exquisite performances by Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant and Claude Rains in a romantic espionage. The chemistry between Bergman and Grant is electrifying….

In celebration of Hedy Lamarr's birthday yesterday, tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is The Strange Woman. Lamarr, stunningly beautiful as always, plays a deeply conflicted woman well, as the film veers wildly from morality tale to lurid melodrama. I am a big fan of Lamarr, not just for her breathtaking beauty or film career, but for…

Tonight's Satruday Night Cinema feature is Lonely are the Brave, produced and starring Kirk Douglas. This was Douglas's favorite film, where he plays the "epitome of the rugged individual in the classic neo-western." Although it never quite escapes the pitfalls of pretension, this film was Kirk Douglas's bid for the affections of the art house…

Geller is on a roll these last few weeks, and tonight's film selection for Saturday Night Cinema is no exception. Directed by my favorite film director, the incomparable Billy Wilder, Some Like It Hot is "replete with breathless pacing, transvestite humor, and unflinching cynicism." And it's damn funny. Starring Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis and…

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema is the thrilling psychological film noir, The Big Clock. Taut, intense suspense told in “superb visual style set against the backdrop of upscale 1940s New York and offering an early (but accurate) depiction of the modern media industry.” Charles Laughton, whom I adore, is brilliant (as always). Sit back and enjoy….

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema is Elmer Gantry, starring Burt Lancaster. It is a must-see for the blockbuster Oscar performance by Lancaster. Elmer Gantry (1960) NY  Times Review by A.H. WEILER Published: July 8, 1960 SINCLAIR LEWIS’ “Elmer Gantry,” which shocked, amused, confounded, but rarely bored readers back in 1927, has been lifted from the pages…