Reviews

This is easily the best adaptation of The Nutcracker I've seen, on stage or film. Ballard is a great director who adapts his skills to the material. The images really flow, and the Maurice Sendak designs are at once graceful and funny and slightly malevolent (giving the material the edge it needs to avoid candyland preciousness). The critics (Ebert, Maltin, et al) really missed the boat on this one. Most of them criticized the fact that Ballard edits into the dancing. But he edits superbly, highlighting the movements that should be highlighted, at precisely the right moment. There's never a cut or a camera move that feels out of place. It's a classic--sadly neglected now (not even available on video).

This is one gorgeous knockout of horror movie--beautifully directed by De Palma and acted by Amy Irving. The script is elaborate junk, but on imagery alone this ranks with Murnau's Nosferatu and Dreyer's Vampyre as among the greatest horror movies ever made. Like those classics, the imagery is more entrancing than terrifying--I never wanted to hide my eyes. The last half-hour is just incredibly intense. Check out the way De Palma cuts from the Gothic night horror of Douglas's confrontation with his demon son to Amy Irving's cozy sunlit bedroom the next day. I always laugh out loud at this transition--because of course the director is just softening us up for the greatest horror climax in movies.

This hilarious rock-opera horror parody explosion came out a year before "Rocky Horror Picture Show," and is superior in every way. A true cult classic (in other words, too extreme for the mainstream Rocky Horror crowd), it comes complete with a audience-participation horror-show freakout at the end. This movie practically defines the '70s.

This movie has the distinction of being too hip even for the hippest period in American movies. (It wasn't the underground hit it deserved to be.) Full of guerrilla street theater and put-ons, and featuring a very young Robert De Niro going through lighting-fast comedy routines, it's an amazing document of the era. Remarkable the number of great actors De Palma discovered--with De Niro at the top of the list.