DAVID BIANCULLI

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ERIC GOULD

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NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
2017
Sep
2
 
 
It’s a spectacular night for watching classic movies from the 1960s and 1970s on TV. Between TCM and Cinemax, viewers tonight can choose from among All the President’s Men, The French Connection, and this Stanley Kubrick masterpiece from 1968 – still perhaps the best, most influential, and most audacious and ambitious science-fiction movie ever made. Whether you haven’t seen it in decades, or haven’t seen it all, you should tune in, and sing along with HAL. “D
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Sep
2
 
 
Any film director planning a chase sequence still does so with this 1971 William Friedkin movie in mind, because it remains, all these decades later, the gold standard for location chase films. Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider star as New York detectives whose persistence is as indefatigable as their abrasiveness – and yet, for all their dedication and stubbornness, there’s a lot of 70s-era bleakness in The French Connection as well. Great movie – and the chop-shop sequence was ho
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Sep
2
 
 
This three-part series, from some of the makers of Planet Earth II, concludes its look at the American West tonight with a look at “Restless Shores” – the Western half of the “sea to shining sea” part of the U.S.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Sep
2
 
 
To say that this 1976 movie, based on the Watergate reporting by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (who are played, respectively, by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman), has a level of added resonance today because of current events would be to overstate the obvious. So I’ll say, instead, that this movie always has been one of my favorites – and is so well-acted, beautiful paced (the screenplay adaptation is by William Goldman), and moodily directed (by Alan J. Pakula) that it works any
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Sep
2
 
 
In the lineup of tonight’s movies from the era, 1973’s Westworld is a minor entry – but given the subsequent pop-culture impact by writer-director Michael Crichton, both on such other resonant theme-parks-gone-awry works as Jurassic Park and HBO’s current Westworld reimagining, this film, starring Richard Benjamin, James Brolin and an iconic Yul Brynner, is especially enjoyable to reassess in modern times.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Sep
1
 
 
American Masters steps away tonight from the kind of old time cultural heroes they usually profile to a more unusual contemporary figure in the midst of his career — indie filmmaker Richard Linklater...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Sep
1
 
 
AMC’s boutique horror channel Shudder takes a different tack this week with Neil Gaiman, one of the genre’s modern masters...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Sep
1
 
 
Richard Linklater may not be the best-known modern American movie director, but he may be the one that most other directors would secretly like to emulate...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Sep
1
 
 
MOVIE PREMIERE: This is not a recommendation. This new Netflix movie, basically, is a comic spoof of The Omen – a horror comedy about a guy (Adam Scott) who marries a woman whose six-year-old son may turn out to be the Antichrist. The only real reason to watch is that the woman is played by former Lost star Evangeline Lilly – but Little Evil wouldn’t have been that surprising, or funny, 40 years ago, had it been released on the heels of The Omen. Today, it’s too Little, a
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Sep
1
 
 
TCM is throwing an end of summer beach party, with a night of beach films beginning with 1963’s Beach Party, starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. There’s no Where the Boys Are on board, but at 10 p.m. ET, another Avalon-Funicello pairing, Muscle Beach Party, is televised. It, too, was released in 1963. These movies didn’t take long to make.