Tag: Timothy Carey

REVIEW: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie [1976]

Jared Mobarak

Got the world by the balls. It’s a wild beginning with Cosmo Vittelli (Ben Gazzara) paying off a guy (Al Ruban‘s Marty) we assume let him borrow money to create his now successful club. Fast-forward to him introducing his seedy establishment’s main act in Mr. Sophistication (Meade Roberts) and the naked girls the audience has paid to see. Fast-forward again to one last payment to Marty. And give us one more to show Cosmo picking up Alice (Alice Friedland), Margo (Donna Gordon), and Rachel (Azizi Johari) in a limousine before…

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REVIEW: The Killing [1956]

Jared Mobarak

Just a bad joke without a punch line. After test screenings left audiences confused and frustrated, writer/director Stanley Kubrick and producing partner James B. Harris decided to return to the edit bay and turn The Killing‘s overlapping, repetitious structure into a more linear A-to-B narrative. You can’t blame the former for wanting to do everything possible to make the film a hit since it was his first project with a real budget positioning his career forward (he’d disavowed Fear and Desire as amateurish and sophomore effort Killer’s Kiss proved almost…

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