The wife (Genevieve Bujold) and daughter of a New Orleans real estate developer (Cliff Robertson) are kidnapped the night of their 10 year anniversary and killed in the botched recovery. Sixteen years later in Florence, where the couple initially met, he discovers his wife's dead ringer (Bujold again) and delves into a state of fixation and compulsion. Well-crafted Brian De Palma film, with a melodramatic script by Paul Schrader, is still an egregious Alfred Hitchcock appropriation (Bernard Herrmann score to boot), here a Vertigo reworking with a climactic scene that laughably mimics Dial M for Murder (It would be interesting to do a shot by shot analysis of De Palma and The Master's work just to see how much is actually borrowed). Robertson is excellent as the brooding lead as is John Lithgow as his snaky partner.

*** out of ****

Recovered from his homicidal delusions and about to be cleared for a release from a mental institution, Chief Inspector Dreyfuss' (Herbet Lom) madness is unhinged once more when Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers), the root cause of all his complications, makes an unexpected and most unfortunate surprise visit causing the senior official to escape, kidnap a physicist, and commandeer a nuclear weapon providing Clouseau with his biggest case yet! The Pink Panther Strikes Again is longish but contains some excellent sight gags and is one of the funniest in the series.

*** out of ****

The leader of a gang of horse thieves (Jack Nicholson) and a mercenary (Marlon Brando) contracted by a Montana rancher are destined for a showdown following the calculated murder of one of the rustlers. Arthur Penn's much maligned Western is awkward and offbeat with lively, unsung performances from Brando and especially Nicholson.

***

A psychic (Barbara Harris) employs her out of work actor boyfriend and part time cab driver/private investigator (Bruce Dern) to locate the long lost son of a client given up years ago for adoption as their schemes intersect those of a pair of highly skilled high profile kidnappers (William Devane and Karen Black). Alfred Hitchcock kept his touch right until this final film, on which he reunited with North by Northwest screenwriter Ernest Lehman. Family Plot is excitingly edited, with a thrilling finale (plus another amusing out of control car sequence) with dialogue that is a little too tongue in cheek and welcomed performances from Harris, Dern, and Devane.

*** 1/2 out of ****

While an overseer sitting high above the clouds looks down and casts judgement, the townspeople in a preindustrial alpine village struggle to recreate a secret glass formula which the head glassmaker has just taken to his grave. Heart of Glass is one of Werner Herzog's stranger experiments: obtuse, without narrative, and reportedly shot with the entire cast under hypnosis, which affects the film with a hazy, somnolent quality. Still, it contains the essence of the iconoclastic director's great work such as its saturated cinematography and the unforgettable moments, notably the glass blowing sequences, the biblical narration over the nature segments, and a murderer dancing with his victim.

*** out of ****

A travelling movie projector repairman takes into his company a despondent wanderer who just underwent a divorce. While going from job to job just west of the East German border, the duo listens to American records while reflecting on women amongst the desolation that surrounds them. Wim Wenders' Kings of the Roads is intelligent, thought provoking fare, brilliantly directed, with two fine lead performances from Rudiger Vogler and Hanns Zischler, and filmed in pristine almost unfathomable black and white. The film is long, bordering on overlong, with a fantastic penultimate, American G.I. bunker set scene followed by a pompous finale.

*** 1/2 out of ****

After acquiring an arsenal of automatic weapons, a street gang declares war on the LAPD, focusing specifically on the soon to be closed Precinct 13 station house whose only hope for defense is a novice commander, a few administrators, a victim of the gang's coldblooded violence seeking refuge, two prisoners on layover from a prison transport, and a short supply of weaponry. John Carpenter's Rio Bravo inspired Assault on Precinct 13 is stylized and surprisingly low key, offering well drawn characters speaking cheesy though admittedly amusing dialogue. The finale is anticlimactic but is preceded by a great escape attempt sequence.

*** out of ****

When longstanding TV news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) learns from his producer/best friend (William Holden) that he will be replaced at his post due to sagging ratings, he announces on live television that he will commit suicide during an upcoming broadcast and goes on a tirade on the state of the industry and the state of affairs in general. With ratings at an all-time high, the studio turns the crisis into an opportunity and seeks to promote "The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves." Sidney Lumet's masterful indictment of both the morally bankrupt and boundless television news industry and the audiences who soak it up is an illustrious production firing on all cylinders beginning with a brilliant, caustic, satirical, and shockingly prescient (as most viewers will point out) Paddy Chayefsky screenplay. The story centers around Finch's mad, showy, dazzling, Oscar winning performance but Holden's worn and weary news producer captures the heart of the film. Additionally, Faye Dunaway (also an Oscar winner) as the soulless, ladder climbing executive, Robert Duvall as the ruthless axeman, the jilted, sobering Beatrice Straight (who took home yet another acting trophy), and Ned Beatty as the bizarre, evangelistic corporate chairman round out the uniformly excellent cast.

**** out of ****

The Last Tycoon tells the fractured story of Hollywood producer Monroe Stahr (Robert De Niro), modeled after MGM's "boy wonder" Irving Thalberg, as he oversees production at a major studio, battles union heads and corrupt executives, and romances a young woman who bears more than a passing resemblance to his deceased actress wife. Whether it was taking a stab at screenwriting, someone else's telling of his own stories, or his boozy, lackluster final years on the West Coast, F. Scott Fitzgerald never really faired well in Hollywood and this wooden treatment of his final, unfinished novel The Love of the Last Tycoon is no exception. The film was also legendary director Elia Kazan's final gig behind the camera, and the screenplay was written by no less than Harold Pinter but, unless I'm mistaken, they draw exclusively from the finished parts of Fitzgerald's novel who frankly didn't leave much to work with. The film is probably worthwhile for De Niro completists, I enjoyed his performance and also that of Jack Nicholson and old pros like Robert Mitchum and Tony Curtis.

1900 tracks the lives of two men born on the same day on the same Italian plantation, one the son of the landowner (Robert De Niro), the other an illegitimate peasant (Gerard Depardieu). Together they go they their own separate routes defined by their class differences and labor stances, amidst the rise of fascism and Mussolini's ascendancy. Bernardo Bertolucci's intensely personal film is incredibly long and unnecessarily crude which is partially redeemed by Depardieu's impassioned performance and Vittorio Storaro's extraordinary cinematography. Oddly and to great frustration, the film's entire five and a half hour duration feels like prologue, as you wait and wait for the moment it will take off, which never arrives.

A has been director (Mel Brooks) and his loyal assistants (Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman) devise the perfect plan to put his name back on the marquee: a silent picture, the first one in decades. Although hesitant, the studio head (Brooks' mentor Sid Caesar) agrees only if he can procure nothing less than the industry's biggest stars including Burt Reynolds, Liza Minnelli, James Caan, Anne Bancroft, and Paul Newman. Here Brooks takes on the admirable charge of crafting a completely silent movie (with one famous, ironical exception) and does so mostly with wit and impressive craft. Like many of his movies, some of the gags go on for too long and many miss the mark, but for the most part Silent Movie is an irreverent good time.

When rookie Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward seeks a courthouse statement from the men who burgled the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate hotel, he thinks he is on to an odd, if unspectacular story. As the various hidden strands begin to reveal themselves, he teams up with jaded reporter Carl Bernstein and begins the tedious and occasionally deadly task of uncovering the greatest political scandal in United States history. Alan J. Pakula's "All the President's Men" is a serpentine, labyrinthine, fascinating, and perhaps possibly a tad too inclusive and precise historical recreation. With Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the leads, both excellent as the dogged reporters, we are given an exacting account of the famous Woodward and Bernstein investigation, as well as a detailed look into a 1970s newsroom. With a barrage of names and a seemingly endless amount of paths to follow, the film can be mind numbing at times, but overall succeeds in making the film all the more gripping. The supporting cast is wonderful, most notably Jack Warden and Martin Balsam as Post editors, Jason Robards as its editor, and Hal Holbrook as the mysterious informant Deep Throat (the parking garage scenes are incredibly intense). "All the President's Men" is a painstaking, involving, and ultimately entertaining demonstration in newspaper/investigative filmmaking.

A southern farmer joins a group of Confederate bandits after his family is slaughtered and finds himself on the run after he is betrayed by the leader of his group. While violently ducking Union soldiers, he teams with a Cherokee Indian and a group of settlers while preparing for the onslaught that is certain to come. "The Outlaw Josey Wales" is an early directorial effort from Clint Eastwood, and one that sought to replicate the success of his Dollars Trilogy of a decade earlier. Instead, and as a result of poor, simplistic screenplay by Phillip Kaufman (who was initially slated to direct), we are given a saccharine, hokey version of The Man with No Name in what is still a pretty violent western (Eastwood did a better job with this task a few years prior in "High Plains Drifter"). I did want to note that John Vernon (Dean Wormer) has an excellent turn as Eastwood's reluctant betrayer. "The Outlaw Josey Wales" is a film of noble intentions and one not without merit, that gets bogged down by the limitations of its screenplay.