June 12, 2003
June 12, 2003

Savant has been listening to fans wanting more Sergio Leone for years, and maybe the ball is finally rolling ...

Warners will make a lot of movie collectors happy with Once Upon a Time in America, Sergio Leone's almost four-hour gangster epic. The labyrinth of flashbacks and Ennio Morricone's superb music are both intact, along with every R-rated outrage perpetrated by Leone's 'lovable' hoods. Starring Robert De Niro, James Woods, Tuesday Weld and Elizabeth McGovern.

Paramount unearths William Wyler gold in the suspense favorite The Desperate Hours. Humphrey Bogart hijacks Fredric March's happy household, an act he lives to regret. With little Richard Eyer as every criminal's nemesis.

John Wayne bursts onscreen for the first time in Raoul Walsh's ancient The Big Trail. It's a good movie, but not the original roadshow 65mm version we were expecting.

And Peter Yates misses the classic mark but hits with a solid action film in Murphy's War. Peter O'Toole retools a wrecked seaplane and uses it to blast a Nazi sub out of a Venezuelan river in WW2. With spectacular scenery and action.

More reviews on Saturday ... thanks for tuning in. With sentimental thoughts for David Brinkley and Gregory Peck ... Glenn Erickson

Posted by DVD Savant at June 12, 2003 02:16 PM