Union Station is a film that delivers quality entertainment for any lover of film noir, particularly the film noirs that came out of Hollywood during the 1940's and 1950's. The film also has a young William Holden in a rare appearance in a film noir, and though the role is nothing special in particular playing a Union Station police detective, it does offer the viewer a glimpse of Holden at the beginning of his career. I was rather surprised to learn in this film that Union Station had its own extensive police force at the time, though I am not sure that is still the case today.

As often is the case in many film noirs, the story is somewhat weak, but what makes the film work is the film noir atmosphere/mood and the varied characters in the film. Of particular interest is the main villain, brilliantly played by Lyle Bettger, who is totally believable as the cold blooded psychopathic kidnapper and murderer. In many ways, he steals this film from the top billed stars. Barry Fitzgerald is great in his usual cute curmudgeonly way, and Olsen and Holden are solid as the heroine and hero.

Darkness is definitely a slick horror film that uses all the tricks in the trade to give us a creepy movie, but in the end this film is simply too slick for its own good. It is just too predictable a film to really engross the viewer into a concern for the characters or context of the film.

We have the usual aspects of the haunted house and the little child being the first to notice the supernatural presence of evil entities. We have the ghoulish human accomplice, and the usual red herring of making certain characters appear to have demonic possession. Nothing new or original, and at times veers toward boredom. As a consequence it will be a forgettable film.

I also find such films annoying when they make the evil entities so omnipotent. It takes away from the suspense of the film when the protagonists don't seem to have literally "a prayer" of survival or winning. This makes the film simply an exercise of waiting for the inevitable demise of the characters in the film.

The film is well made and slick enough to entertain most ardent horror movie fans, but I would not recommend it unless one is simply seeking a movie to watch or is really a big fan of horror movies.

A true gem of a film, Fritz Lang gives us a tale of vigilantism and revenge that offers a warning of its dangers to society and the human soul.

Spencer Tracy has never been better. His ability to play a good and decent man left for dead, and then becoming a vengeful man seething with righteous hate is remarkable and a real treat for any film buff or admirer of great acting talent. The film also has a noteworthy performance by the ubiquitous Bruce Cabot.

Fritz Lang was rarely given a big budget for his Hollywood films, but this I believe made him an even better director. His ability to use his actors to their fullest degree and range, and take simple stories to great heights are attributes that have and will ensure his legacy as one of the great directors in film history.

A must see film that offers great entertainment with a strong moral and social message

The Funeral is a fascinating film set I assume during the Depression era of the 1930's. It offers a gritty realism of the evil banality of a crime family, the moral and spiritual dichotomy between its women and men, the corruption of their children (there is a sad scene of a father helping his child commit a murder), and how violence is an ever present reality of their existence (either kill or be killed). The priest visiting at the funeral tells one of the wives the truth of their existence: despite the cultural veneer of faith and spirituality, the reality is that they lead lives of practical atheism. Ironically, the Walken character often refers to how hell awaits him, yet he does not seem to either care or want to avoid it.

Not your typical gangster movie, the film portrays a spiritual angst and search for meaning that can never be satisfied given the context of who they are. The madness of one of the brothers could be argued came from a spiritual bankruptcy that he never recovered from. There is such a pervasive immorality amongst the men in this film that it becomes somewhat emotionally disconcerting to the viewer. "How do these people live with themselves?" seems to be the question that constantly comes to mind.

Not a film for everyone, since it presents a gritty realism that is ugly and disheartening.

Fire Down Below is a vehicle to display the star power of Rita Hayworth, Robert Mitchum, and Jack Lemmon.

Hayworth gives a very believable performance of a woman who has used her body to survive, using men as one would use a bar of soap. She presents a haunting beauty that has a worn and tired edge to it, erotic but nefarious. The odd thing about this film is that she performs for only half of the film, the main protagonist in this film being Jack Lemmon. Though another actor would have been much better in this role (Lemmon can't help but present a somewhat comedic nature), he nevertheless is adequate in a very challenging role. In it, he has to present a certain innocence along with a worldly and dangerous demeanor.

Mitchum is a great actor. He can present himself in almost any dimension, this time as a first class heel who sells his soul for the lust (not love) of Hayworth's beauty. However, the film unfortunately does not allow him to be totally without merit, and I found this to be somewhat contradictory in the character. Mitchum plays a man quite prepared to betray and even risk the life of his best friend, yet at the end of the film presents himself as a man quite prepared to risk his life to save the same friend he betrayed. Possible I suppose, but highly unlikely.

The film tends to get a little slow at times, and probably could have done a better job at working up the suspense and tension of Jack Lemmon's plight on the Ulysses. However, the film's great pleasure is to view the performances of these legendary superstars working together.

You Only Live Once is a gritty black and white classic set during the Depression era and directed by the great Fritz Lang. It is a film that creates an air of such despair that one cannot help but have the ominous feeling that the two lovers in this film, Sylvia Sidney as Joan and Henry Fonda as Eddie, will meet an inevitable doom.

The Henry Fonda character is somewhat maddening in this film. He is not an evil man, though his moral compass may be somewhat out of whack, but more an intelligent man making incredibly stupid choices. The choices he makes are so stupid that he simply digs himself deeper and deeper into a quagmire of doom, and he brings his wife with him. Joan's love for Eddie, which borders almost on obsession, blinds her totally as to what this all leads to and consequently to its tragic end.

In fairness to Eddie, the film attempts to lead us to the conclusion that the economic despair and dead end future of the Depression leads people to make poor choices and affects their perspective of reality. Yet, Eddie is an intelligent man, and so is his wife Joan, but they cannot seem to get off the road to hell that they are on. Why? They are not vicious criminals or gangsters, yet they end up being hunted as such. Probably it is because Eddie ultimately could not accept the reality of his existence and the future that awaited him.

By modern standards this film could come across as melodramatic rather than a love affair meeting a tragic end. However, the acting of the two principals, Sydney and Fonda, is very good and the film tells its story in an effective manner. It also gives us a fleeting feeling of the hard times of the Depression, especially if one found themselves at the lower end of the economic strata.

The Hit could have been a dull film, because even though it is about two hit men, played by John Hurt and Tim Roth, who are hired to bring the Terence Stamp character to Paris in order to murder him, in many ways this is a road picture. It is almost the Shakespearean interplay between the four main characters, the other being Laura del Sol, that makes this film a cut above your average films about hit men or road trips. Remarkably, this is very much a spiritual film.

It is always intriguing to view violent evil perpetrated by people who are not psychopaths. One wonders about the dynamics of a person who can subdue or ignore their conscience to the point where they cease to be human and become monsters. The angst that the John Hurt characters experiences regarding his conscience is portrayed in such a genuine way that it does not come across as corny or melodramatic, and Tim Roth, shows a young man with limited opportunities ultimately making a career decision that he is not suited for.

Terence Stamp is superb in his role of the victim of the hit. Stamp's character at first gives the impression of a man who is spiritually at peace and quite prepared to meet death. Yet, when the moment of death comes, something all too real happens to his psyche and the realization of the finality of death hits home. The film makes an interesting point that can be interpreted in different ways, but if one is to assume that Stamp's character did indeed have a spiritual conversion of sorts earlier on, it does not necessarily ease the burden of facing death.

Laura del Sol does a fine job playing a character dragged into this perverse nightmare, and in the end, it is her character that frees John Hurt's conscience to become human again, and also be the instrument of his punishment and possible redemption.

The Hit is a very unusual film for the genre, and as a consequence a film well worth viewing.

This has to be one of the most dishonest films ever made. It is so bad, yet never amusing in how bad it is. It misleads the viewer into thinking this could be an interesting film involving Bruce Lee, but really is just an exercise in exploitation of Bruce Lee's legacy, stupidity, and incompetent film making. A total waste of time.

Let 'Em Have It is a mediocre film. The film comes across at times as a cheap and corny advertisement for the U.S. Department of Justice, the story and plot often too unbelievable, the action is lame, the love story thrown in is a joke, a ridiculous ending, and it has an agent that gets himself murdered by making one of the most moronic and unprofessional decisions one could imagine. Yet, I enjoyed viewing this film for one reason: the performance of Bruce Cabot.

I am not sure if it was Cabot or the director, maybe both, but Cabot's performance in this film is atypical of your usual gangster. It is artistically perverse. At times his performance is way over the top. He plays a gangster who chooses a path of evil even though the film shows us that he comes from a good hard working family, so that he can achieve his dream of getting a million dollars. The fact that he is a ruthless psychopath helps in this criminal pursuit, yet his character shows a humanity, leadership skills, and sense of humour which is sometimes un-nerving. There is a scene with Cabot in this film which is one of the funniest I have ever seen on film, something you would have expected in an Abbott and Costello movie.

Like I said. This is a mediocre film, but it is worth viewing for Bruce Cabot's performance alone.

Till Human Voices Wake Us major problem is that it really is two films in one. I understand the necessity of the flashback in order to make the ghost story work, but in the end I felt disappointed. This could have been a better ghost story if more emphasis had been placed on the adult Dr. Franks (played by Guy Pierce), who plays an emotionally damaged and repressed individual, and his encounter with the ghost of a tragic figure from his past; or conversely, this could have been a better film if it had focused on Dr. Franks as a young boy and his traumatic experience and how he dealt with it, his relationship with his father (which the film is rather ambiguous about), and how he came to be a psychiatrist. All these themes I think would have made a better film if presented separately, since none of them were fully developed or explored satisfactorily by condensing them in one movie.

The film does have strong points nevertheless. The relationships in the film are interesting, and there is a poetic quality to the romance of both the young and adult Dr. Franks with his beloved which is pleasing. I liked Guy Pierce's performance as an emotionally repressed and sad individual. There is something also intriguing about the fantasy blessing of being able to resolve major life regret from one's past through the intercession of a ghost (or vivid dream?).

It is difficult for me to recommend this film, even though it is not a bad film by any means. However, it tends to get somewhat too slow and introspective at times, and as I said earlier, it does not in my opinion fully satisfy due to it being broken into really two films in one.