From Chinatown to Niketown

By Michael Sragow SF Weekly September 30, 1998 In 1974 Robert Towne was seething about the lot of his script for Chinatown, now considered his most famous work. Released that same year, the screenplay won an Oscar for Towne. When I interviewed him at the time, he was...

Once Upon a Time in America

By Michael Sragow The Boston Phoenix March 5, 1985 Now that it’s arrived in its uncut, 227-minute, director-approved form, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America emerges as a pulp masterwork—at once the simplest and most indescribable of movies. In a sense, it’s...

Rear Window

By Michael Sragow The Boston Phoenix October 11, 1983 Rear Window is more than one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest comedies of terrors. Set in a Greenwich Village apartment and its adjoining courtyards, this urban variation on the backyard-murder story is a...