Harry Horner Movies

Pop singer Neil Diamond stars in this ill-begotten second remake of Al Jolson's seminal 1927 musical The Jazz Singer. The moth-eaten story concerns a cantor's son who desires success as a pop singer, despite the wishes of his imperious father. The film takes place in the present day with Yussel Rabinowitz (Neil Diamond) playing a young (though middle-aged looking) cantor performing at the synagogue of his father (Laurence Olivier). Yussel is married and has settled down to a life of religious devotion to the teaching of his fath. But on the side, he writes songs for a black singing group, and when a member of the quartet takes ill, Yussel covers for him at one of their gigs by wearing blackface! The nightclub engagement is such a success that Yussel abandons his family -- and his father's synagogue -- and leaves his New York home for Los Angeles, hoping to break into the music business. Almost immediately he is spotted by spunky agent Molly Bell (Lucie Arnaz), who books him as an opening act for a touring comic. Yussel hits it big, but his father resents Yussel's forsaking their traditional Jewish ways. His father disowns him, rending his garments and bellowing, "I hef no son!" ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Walter Hill's stripped down neo-noir features a protagonist who makes the laconic boxer of the director's similar Hard Times (1974) seem logorrheic by comparison. The film's tone is set in the opening scene as the Driver (Ryan O'Neal) gloms a V-8 sedan and proceeds to whip through claustrophobic parking garages, narrow alleyways, and sundry other high-risk macadam, as he demonstrates why he's known as the best getaway driver in the business to some potential clients, before giving his vehicle a proper burial. Such plot as there is in this highly abstract film concerns the Driver's cat and mouse game with the Detective (Bruce Dern), an employee of the constabulary of an unnamed city, intent on his arrest. A mysterious and beautiful woman, the Player (Isabelle Adjani), soon appears on the Driver's radar, a perfect match for his taciturnity. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide

Harry and Walter Go to New York was born of the theory that, the more stars and money that you throw into a film, the better the film will be. The theory has seldom been proven true, and it certainly wasn't in this case. Harry (James Caan) and Walter (Elliot Gould) are a third-rate vaudeville team, playing tank towns in turn-of-the-century USA. Thrown into the hoosegow on a petty-theft charge, our heroes make the acquaintance of big-time crook Adam Worth (Michael Caine). Once they're sprung, Harry and Walter follow Worth to New York, with the intention of pulling off a huge bank robbery. Lissa Chestnut (Diane Keaton), a bird-brained suffragette, is also mixed up in the proceedings though she never seems certain of who or what her character is from one scene to the next. The film's one tangible asset is its meticulous re-creation of 1890s New York, courtesy of art director Harry Horner. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Up The Sandbox is a complex and difficult film, and it is ambiguous on many points, particularly on whether the protagonist Margaret Reynolds (Barbara Streisand) is a women's liberationist, a closet lesbian, or a masochist. Based on the novel by Anne Richardson Rolphe, it follows Margaret's attempts to tell her husband that she is pregnant with yet another child. The everyday events of her life are punctuated by numerous and complex fantasy sequences which reveal her fears and her desires. It is clear that she is afraid that she and her husband Paul (David Selby) are growing apart -- and that he may be having an affair. Despite the increasingly elaborate and frantic nature of her fantasies, her disclosure, when she finally makes it, has happy results. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A total of nine Academy Award nominations went to this wildly acclaimed, allegorical drama set amongst the contestants in a marathon dance contest during the Great Depression. Gig Young stars as Rocky, the obnoxious emcee for a dance marathon that offers prize money of $1,500, a small fortune during hard economic times that brings out the worst in several participants. Among them are Gloria Beatty (Jane Fonda), a malcontent who's partnered with a drifter, Robert Syverton (Michael Sarrazin); a pregnant farm girl (Bonnie Bedelia) and her husband (Bruce Dern); a sailor (Red Buttons); and an aspiring actress (Susannah York). As the marathon winds into a staggering second month, suspicion, doubt and insecurity rages among the competitors and even the decaying and increasingly manipulative Rocky, leading to a shocking crime. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Ginger Coffey (Robert Shaw) is an out-of-work Irish immigrant who moves to Montreal with his wife, Vera (Mary Ure), and teenage daughter, Paulie (Libby McClintock), in hopes of a better life. After six months, the family fortunes have not changed, and Vera and Paulie beg Ginger to return to Ireland. He lands a job as a proofreader with a newspaper, but Vera and Paulie move out when Vera realizes his 45 dollar-a-week paycheck will not suffice. Ginger quits his second job as a laundry-truck driver and pins all his hopes on becoming a reporter. Paulie comes back to live with him, but Ginger is fired at the paper and sinks deeper into alcoholism and depression. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Although a mood of melancholy or worse pervades this excellent western, it remains an honest and hard-hitting look at the realistic adventures of Martin Brady (Robert Mitchum -- who produced). Brady fled to Mexico while still quite young in order to avoid prison in the U.S. -- he had killed his father's murderer. After years spent working as a gunman for a wealthy "padron," he hates white Americans but has to go north to get weapons. Once on the wrong side of the border, he gets into trouble with U.S. Army for not helping them hunt down Apaches. But the people he meets in a small town, one a European immigrant, begin to change his black-and-white view of the world. Meanwhile, he and Ellen Colton (Julie London), the unhappy wife of an army major, begin to fall in love. Several more adventures and a tragedy or two affect the unlikely couple's future -- ultimately for the better. Baseball hero "Satchel" Paige shows up in a cameo role, leading an Afro-American unit of the U.S. army. Mexican star Pedro Armendariz is Brady's boss, Governor Castro. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The dramatic weight of Man From Del Rio rests securely on the broad shoulders of star Anthony Quinn. Cast as an indigent Mexican gunslinger, Quinn is asked by an old pal to clean up an outlaw-ridden western town. Knowing that his reputation is exaggerated, Quinn relies on braggadocio and bluff to keep the villains at bay. But when he is appointed town sheriff, it is "put up or shut up" time. Katy Jurado, who'd become "typed" as a western actress since High Noon, costars as Quinn's would-be lover. Man From Del Rio offers little that hasn't been seen before, but Anthony Quinn keeps things moving at a fast and exciting clip. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Third-billed Lee Marvin dominates the proceedings in A Life in the Balance. Marvin plays a psycho killer, whose trail is dogged by inquistive young Jose Perez. Jose's father, musician Ricardo Montalban, has been accused of a series of murders. The boy is convinced (correctly, it turns out) that Marvin is the guilty party, and trails the man in hopes of bringing him to justice. No dummy he, Perez leaves a trail for the authorities to follow--a series of smashed-up police call boxes (a similar plot device was deployed for comic purposes by Harold Lloyd in Professor Beware). A Life in the Balance was filmed on location in Mexico City, with a great deal of screen time devoted to a colorful carnival. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Producer Leonard Sillman's 1952 edition of his popular Broadway revue New Faces was filmed just as it was staged, save for a wraparound fictional romantic story. The newly grafted plotline involves the efforts of director Ronny Graham to stave off an angry creditor long enough to open his show. We occasionally cut away to the backstage intrigues, but never long enough to take anything away from Sillman's talented cast of newcomers. The cast includes Eartha Kitt, singing such standards-to-be as "C'est Ci Bon" and "Monotonous;" Robert Clary, doing a medley of his hit "I'm in Love With Miss Logan;" Alice Ghostley, belting forth a brace of satirical torch songs; Paul Lynde (heavier than we're used to seeing him), offering his "safari" monologue and later participating in a screamingly funny Death of a Salesman takeoff; and Ronny Graham, performing an extended lampoon of either Tennessee Williams or Truman Capote (we aren't too sure; judge for yourself). Carol Lawrence also makes her first film appearance herein. The Broadway production's biggest song hit, "Love is a Simple Thing," is sung and danced to the oversaturation point. Among the many writers was a young fellow by the name of Melvin Brooks (that's how he's billed). Its production flaws and budget shortcomings notwithstanding, the wide-screen, full-color New Faces of 1952 offers a rare opportunity for a 1990s audience to see what a 50s-style musical revue really looked like to the opening-night crowd. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A husband-and-wife scientist team (Peter Graves, Andrea King) are experimenting with a "hydrogen tube" invention (which he got from a missing German scientist, lost in the collapse of the Reich), when they get signals back from what appears to be Mars. The culture-shock of that event is serious enough, and the couple and their family are suddenly thrust into the spotlight. But then they begin to translate the increasingly complex messages (which started out as mathematical equations) that they receive back, and find that Mars is a perfect world, a true Utopia, and that the messages are quoting Scripture -- and the inevitable conclusion is that God is speaking from Mars. Soon a religious revival starts to spread across the globe. What they don't realize is that the messages are a very calculated fraud, being engineered by a Communist operative (Marvin Miller) and carried out by the scientist (Herbert Berghof) who invented the hydogen tube, and who now has an even more sinister agenda of his own. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Nick Robey (John Garfield) is a down-on-his-luck two-bit hood, fast on his feet but a little slow on the uptake. His running buddy, Al Molin (Norman Lloyd), does most of the thinking for him, which includes a payroll heist that goes horribly wrong when a cop spots them just as they've slugged the man with the cash. Al is wounded and caught, but Nick manages to get away, shooting the police officer in the process. He remembers Al's last instructions, to act calmly and melt into the crowd, but Nick isn't quite able to do that -- he hides out at a public swimming pool, where he meets Peg Dobbs (Shelley Winters), a nice but shy working girl, and convinces her to let him take her home. Once there, he tries to spend a normal evening, as though he were on a date, while her mother (Selena Royle), father (Wallace Ford), and younger brother (Bobby Hyatt) go out to a movie. But he can't relax, and their return rattles Nick enough so that he pulls his gun and reveals who he is and what he's done. This is one of several miscalculations that Nick makes in the course of holding the family hostage over the next two days. He initially plans on leaving in the morning, but when he discovers that the police officer whom he shot has died, and that they know who he is, he has to stay, letting the Dobbs family go about their business but always keeping at least one of them at home with him as a hostage, to make sure the others don't talk to the police. The family's plight is further complicated by the fact that Peg is truly attracted to him, despite what he's done, and seems willing to risk a great deal to see her family safe and him safely away from their home. She wants to love him, but discovers that someone who can't trust anyone for more than a few seconds at a time -- forget the gun he's always threatening to use -- can't even feel love, much less act on those feelings. Meanwhile, the police dragnet keeps getting tighter, and Peg's father knows he has to act soon to end this situation before the authorities come knocking on his door and Nick starts shooting. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Henry James based his 1881 novella Washington Square on a real-life incident, wherein a young actor of his acquaintance married an unattractive but very wealthy young woman for the express purpose of living the rest of his life in luxury. Washington Square was turned into a stage play in 1946 by Ruth and Augustus Goetz; this, in turn was adapted for the movies under the title The Heiress. Olivia DeHavilland won an Academy Award (her second) for her portrayal of Catherine Sloper, the plain-Jane daughter of wealthy widower Dr. Austin Sloper (Ralph Richardson). Catherine is not only unattractive, but lacks most of the social graces, thanks in great part to the domineering attitudes of her father. When Catherine falls in love with handsome young Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), she is convinced that her love is reciprocated, else why would Morris be so affectionate towards her? Dr. Sloper sees things differently, correctly perceiving that Morris is a callow fortune hunter. Standing up to her father for the first time in her life, Catherine insists that she will elope with Morris; but when Dr. Sloper threatens to cut off her dowry, Morris disappears. Still, Catherine threatens to run off with the next young man who pays any attention to her; Sloper, belatedly realizing how much he has hurt his only child, arranges to leave her his entire fortune. Years pass: Morris returns, insisting that he'd only left because he didn't want to cause Catherine the "grief" of being disinherited. Seemingly touched by Morris' "sincerity", Catherine agrees to elope with him immediately. But when Morris arrives at the appointed hour, he finds the door locked and bolted. Asked how she can treat Morris so cruelly, Catherine replies coldly "Yes, I can be very cruel. I have been taught by masters." Though The Heiress ends on a downbeat note, the audience is gratified to know that Catherine Sloper has matured from ugly-duckling loser to a tower of strength who will never allow herself to be manipulated by anyone ever again. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide