David Silver Movies

Phoebe (Mary Steenburgen) and Jason (Dudley Moore) are a pair of Broadway playwrights who are partners in their chosen profession, but in spite of a definite inclination, they remain unpartnered (for a long time) in any other way. Phoebe is an aspiring playwright from the Northwoods and Jason is just getting married when the two meet for the first time and decide to collaborate. As their relationship produces first a failure and then a string of successes, their repartée remains sharp and witty -- and their unrequited interest in each other gathers energy over a nine-year period, until some resolution is finally in sight. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Also known as The Muse Concert: No Nukes, this rock-concert film offers a good representative cross-section of old-line show business liberalism. Bruce Springsteen and Bonnie Raitt are the "newest" members of the aggregation by default. They're okay if not brilliant, which can also be said for their fellow troubadours Jackson Browne, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, James Taylor and the Doobie Brothers. The anti-nuke theme of the concert isn't as overbearing as it might have been under the circumstances (even "special guest" Jane Fonda is comparatively benign). The best sequences in the film are comprised of misleading government-propaganda clips from the old TV series "The Big Picture" (love those uniformed piglets!) The graininess of the film stock is the only real detriment of No Nukes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Adapted from Judith Rossner's best-selling novelization of a true story, Richard Brooks's melodrama turns one woman's search for a liberated life into a cautionary tale about promiscuity. After an affair with her college professor, no-longer-good Catholic girl Theresa Dunn (Diane Keaton) follows the lead of her hedonistic sister (Tuesday Weld) and moves out of her oppressive family home to forge a life of her own. A compassionate teacher of deaf children by day, Theresa metamorphoses into a sexually free cruiser of singles bars by night. She prefers the satisfying attentions of unpredictable, danger-tinged stud Tony Lopanto (Richard Gere) to the more noble intentions of social worker James (William Atherton), but she ditches anyone who prevents her from being her "own girl." As Theresa's life threatens to spin out of control, she makes a vow to clean up her existence once and for all. But before she makes the break, she goes to one more bar and brings home one more man (Tom Berenger). ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Ocean View High is an upscale suburban school in an otherwise unidentified community. It's 1971, the point when the sexual revolution started moving into full swing and even a lot of Middle America, at least on the two coasts, admitted the existence of same revolution. It seems like the guys and girls at Ocean View are all loving pretty freely, and that extends to the school's resident faculty hero, football coach/guidance counselor "Tiger" McDrew (Rock Hudson), who -- despite his being married, with a child -- has been bedding many of the prettiest girls at the school. The only kid seemingly not "getting any" is Ponce de Leon Harper (John David Carson), who is starting to get neurotic and suffer academically, so much so that he seeks advice from McDrew, especially where his new substitute teacher, Miss Smith (Angie Dickinson), is concerned. But then various girls start turning up at the school dead, in various states of undress, with cryptic notes pinned to intimate parts of their anatomy. The lunkhead county sheriff (Keenan Wynn) is forced to defer to a state police investigator (Telly Savalas), who starts nosing around the school and uncovers more than he bargained for in terms of libidinous students, among other problems. Meanwhile, Ponce finds his problem taken care of by Miss Smith, at McDrew's request. But there's still a killer stalking the school.

If the plot and ambience of this movie seems shocking today, that's because it would be. Made at the outset of the sexual revolution, this was MGM's desperate attempt to run with the times, in terms of depicting a high school where sexual relations between students are considered routine and even those between faculty and students are accepted as long as they're kept quiet. Anyone trying to make such a movie in 2006 would face threats of prosecution, investigation, etc., and probably find it impossible to get the movie booked into theaters; MGM didn't have that easy a time in 1971, though (amazingly) the movie has been shown on television. Precisely what director Roger Vadim brought to Gene Roddenberry's screenplay (based on a novel by Francis Pollini) is difficult to tell, though he at least makes the sleazy and tawdry, smirky sex scenes and leering camera shots flow smoothly -- screenplay, director, and cameraman alike are fixated on the female anatomy throughout, though not in as distinctive a manner as Russ Meyer and his attachment to breasts. The presence of a couple of Star Trek co-stars and supporting villains, James Doohan and William Campbell, also makes this especially weird to watch. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

James Coburn stars as super-spy Derek Flint in this action comedy which takes the tongue-in-cheek wit of the James Bond series and shifts it into high gear. Flint is an ultra-sophisticated operative of international intelligence agency Z.O.W.I.E. He's a master of martial arts, electronic gadgetry (his cigarette lighter can perform 83 special functions), languages both human and animal (he can communicate with dolphins in a pinch), and even gives ballet lessons to the dancers of the Bolshoi. So when his fellow agents begin dropping like flies, Z.O.W.I.E. assigns Flint the task of finding out who the killers happen to be. Eventually, Flint discovers that the killings are all part of the wicked machinations of G.A.L.A.X.Y., a cadre of world-wide villainy that plans to take over the world through weather control. Our Man Flint also stars Lee J. Cobb, Gila Golan, and Edward Mulhare. A sequel, In Like Flint, followed two years later, and in 1976, the character was revived for a TV movie, Our Man Flint: Dead on Target, with Ray Danton taking over the role of Derek Flint. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

If Warner Bros.' pageantlike The FBI Story resembles an episode of Jack Webb's Dragnet at times, it's probably because the screenplay was by veteran Dragnet scrivener Richard L. Breen. The film meticulously details the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from its formation in 1924 to the present day (1959, that is). The story is told through the eyes of FBI agent Chip Hardesty (James Stewart), who narrates the film. We see the FBI tackling such villains as the Ku Klux Klan, the mob, the Nazis and the communists. Subplots include the struggle by the federal agents to be given permission to carry firearms, a plight driven home when Hardesty's best friend (Murray Hamilton) is killed by gun-toting Baby Face Nelson (William Phipps). Offsetting moments like these are scenes of Hardesty's home life with his wife Lucy (Vera Miles), who at first opposed her husband's joining the bureau but who later becomesJ. Edgar Hoover's biggest fan. Excessively sentimental at times (it seems that the Hardesty family can never hold a party without receiving a terse telegram announcing yet another personal tragedy) and saddled with a rambling, stop-and-start continuity, the overall success of The FBI Story hinges upon its individual episodes, including a wowser of a pre-credits sequence involving matricidal mad bomber John Graham (Nick Adams). Since the film was made at a time when the FBI was considered to be of spotless reputation, don't expect to see any scenes of the bureau wiretapping civil rights leaders--or, for that matter, J. Edgar Hoover prancing around in drag. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

According to Universal-International publicity, The Lady Takes a Flyer is partially based on fact. The "lady" is Maggie Colby (Lana Turner) and the "flyer" is former Air Force colonel Mike Dandridge (Jeff Chandler). The two form a partnership when Mike decides to inaugurate an air-ferry service with Maggie as his chief pilot. Mike's wartime buddy Al Reynolds (Richard Denning) also signs on with the new service, though Al's hopes for a romance with Maggie are dashed when she marries Mike. Trouble arises when Maggie becomes pregnant and Mike insists that she give up her perilous lifestyle and become just another housewife. All conflicts are resolved during an exciting finale, wherein a fogbound Maggie is guided across the Atlantic via the radioed instructions of her loving husband. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide