Foster on Film

The upper-class guests at an after-opera dinner party find themselves making excuses not to leave when the party appears to be over. By morning it is clear that they cannot leave, either due to magic, miracle, curse, or weird psychological state. As days drag by, and thirst, hunger, and sickness engulf them, the guest become

Lyricist Lorenz Hart (Mickey Rooney) was deeply, tragically upset about being short, which is a little odd since he was actually an alcoholic homosexual, but since no one was either of those things in 1940s cinema, it’s being short that bothered him. He teams up with the composer Richard Rodgers (Tom Drake), who is too

Dr. Henryk Savaard (Boris Karloff) is one of the greatest scientists in the world. He has created a technique to restore a dead body to life which will progress the art of surgery by a thousand year (or maybe a few decades). With the aid of his protégé Lang (Byron Foulger), he finishes the first

Thirteen years ago a dinner party is interrupted when the master of the house, John Morgan, dies. Only 12 of the expected 13 guests had arrived and his Last Will and Testament leaves the bulk of the estate to the missing 13th guest. Now Marie Morgan (Ginger Rogers), on her 21st birthday, has been sent

Sir Lionel Barton (Lawrence Grant), who is the definition of an Englishman, has discovered the tomb of Genghis Khan. This news worries the always-worried but also stiff upper-lipped Nayland Smith (Lewis Stone) of the British secret service. He knows that Dr. Fu Manchu (Boris Karloff) wants the mask and sword of Genghis Khan to make

Dolly Levi (Barbra Steisand), an elderly widow who for some reason looks twenty-five and stunning, decides to give up her matchmaking career and find herself a match. Her target is wealthy Horace Vandergelder (Walter Matthau). On her path to getting him, she fixes up the relationships of his niece Ermengarde (Joyce Ames), who she sends

Peter Foley (Rex Lease) is deeply in dept to G.W. Parker (Sam Hardy), and needs his inheritance to pay him off. His problem is that he needs a wife to get it, and his intended bride Alice Blake (Vera Reynolds) has been delayed. So Parker supplies him with a fake wife for the night, Julia

Brian Smith (Colin Firth), an angry writer, murders Cesar Valentine (Peter O’Toole), an egotistical actor, and then is killed by a falling light. Both end up in a hotel on a small island, filled with dead celebrities. As people become less famous on Earth, they are moved to smaller and smaller rooms, until they are

[This is not my picks for the best of the year—I’ll do the FOSCARs later—but just how I’d vote based on the options presented. And I will be skipping the animated shorts as I have not seen enough of them]   ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE CILLIAN MURPHY (Oppenheimer) [I’d have given it to Barry

Small-town cowboy-wannabe Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar) picks up pixie-girl Mae (Jenny Wright) sometime late in the evening (it’s hard to say when as time doesn’t work in this film). That’s a problem as she’s a vampire (the “V” word is never used) who converts him. He’s now stuck with her vampire family: angry man in

Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972) Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973) Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974) Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975) Four films, one synopsis: Aliens–wacky inept aliens–plan to take over the world in the most logical fashion: using giant monsters. Why use advanced weaponry when you can use over-sized bipedal critters? Godzilla, the atomic destroyer and all around swell

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla isn’t much, but that still puts it miles above its predecessors. The aliens are now space apes, in human form, naturally. The big news is that Godzilla has just one opponent. That’s shaking things up. It is a laser-shooting mechanical Godzilla, so fearsome that the real lizard only stands a chance with