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Sinbad adaptations vary in quality and reception, from cult classics like "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" to box office bombs like "Legend of the Seven Seas". The portrayal of Sinbad ranges from ancient to modern, with attempts at Harryhausen homages that sometimes fall flat with audiences. Some adaptations, like the Sinbad Anime Film Series, stay true to the original story while others, like "Son of Sinbad," focus more on Hollywood glamour.

The story of Sinbad has been adapted multiple times over the years, but some versions rank higher than others, whether on Rotten Tomatoes or by audience opinion. Whether it's a Japanese anime film series or an American film from the 1980s, movies about the famous sailor have retold his story numerous times. Many of the stories have been recognized for their value, such as the Ray Harryhausen cult classics, while others have slowly faded into obscurity.

Unlike other real-life pirates and sailors,...

Warren Beatty’s show is a beautiful, one of a kind epic. Never mind that it is sharply critical of John Reed, an American who was buried in the Kremlin — Hollywood never approached the title subject directly: (whisper) Commies. Beatty’s production idiosyncrasies raised eyebrows but his picture is quite an achievement in filmic storytelling, cleverly accessing a political scene sixty years gone through testimony by notables that lived it. Beatty and Diane Keaton provide the romantic fireworks that make the film commercially viable, amid all the revolutionary fervor and political chaos.

Reds 40th Anniversary

Blu-ray + Digital

Paramount Home Video

1981 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 195 min. / 40th Anniversary Edition / Street Date November 30, 2021 / 17.99

Starring: Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Edward Herrmann, Jerzy Kosiński, Jack Nicholson, Paul Sorvino, Maureen Stapleton, M. Emmet Walsh, Ian Wolfe, George Plimpton, Dolph Sweet, Ramon Bieri, Gene Hackman, Gerald Hiken, William Daniels, Oleg Kerensky, Shane Rimmer, Jerry Hardin, Jack Kehoe,...

Jan Triska, a Czech actor who starred in such Hollywood movies as “Ronin” and “Ragtime,” has died after a fall on Saturday from Prague’s iconic Charles Bridge. He was 80 years old. According to the Associated Press, Prague theater director Jan Hrusinsky confirmed the death on Monday. The actor died in Prague’s military hospital overnight from his injuries after Saturday’s fall. The circumstances of the fall are still unclear. Triska moved to the United States in 1977 after he signed a human rights manifesto against Czechoslovakia’s then-Communist government, according to The Guardian. He had been inspired by his close friend,...

Robert De Niro picks up a gun once again as a highly paid spy-mercenary-thief hired for a bit of international larceny, the robbing of a courier of some undisclosed secrets of one kind or another. Juicing up a Melville- like stoic crime fantasy with superb car stunt work puts director John Frankenheimer back in the game, with a worthy project.

Ronin

Blu-ray

Arrow Video USA

1998 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 122 min. / Street Date August 29, 2017 / Available from Arrow Video 39.95

Starring: Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Sean Bean, Stellan Skarsgard, Skipp Sudduth, Michael Lonsdale, Jan Triska, Jonathan Pryce.

Cinematography: Robert Fraisse

Film Editor: Tony Gibbs

Original Music: Elia Cmiral

Written by J.D. Zeik, David Mamet (as Richard Weisz)

Produced by Frank Mancuso Jr.

Directed by John Frankenheimer

Ronin is something of a last gasp for the Mancuso-era United Artists (MGM), a lavishly appointed all-on-location major action picture directed by a great...

Jan Švankmajer seems to have entered that slightly awkward phase of the arthouse auteur's career where he's apt to be underappreciated. The critics have already said all the obvious things about him, he's had a few films place in pantheonic positions of a kind (Dimensions of Dialogue, Alice), and so we're ready to allow the dust to gather on his legacy. Yet the Great Man remains obstinately and inconveniently alive, and still making films.

His latest, Surviving Life (Theory and Practice), is doing the festival rounds, while its immediate predecessor, Lunacy (2005), has faded into the obscurity of the recent-but-not-current. I'm as guilty as anyone of this neglect: I didn't see Lunacy when it came out. preferring to wait for DVD release. I admit to being less than enamored with Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), although I quite liked Little Otik (2000), and even participated in a TV play somewhat influenced by it. Needless to say,...

Having examined the American fright features populating the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival’s Midnight collection, it’s high time to look at a pair of European genre movies playing the event. One of them is actually part of the Spotlight section instead, as Lunacy's Czech writer/director Jan Svankmajer, at age 71, now qualifies as a Grand Old Man of oddball cinema as opposed to the young turks populating the Midnight realm. And despite its title, Lunacy may be the least “mad” of Svankmajer’s features, committing (pardon the pun) to a straightforward story interspersed with the filmmaker’s traditional surreal stop-motion animation. In an onscreen introduction, the filmmaker describes his latest work as “a horror film, with all the degeneracy of the genre,” and is interrupted by a fleshy animated tongue skittering past his feet. That’s a sign of things to come, as the stop-motion isn’t nearly as...

At the film's center are a pair of 10-year-olds, Eda (Vaclav Jakoubek) and Tonda (Radoslav Budac), part of a whole elementary class of rascals whose bad behavior has dispatched their teacher to an asylum. Her replacement turns out to be the semi-uniformed, charismatic Igor Hnizdo (Jan Triska) who soon enforces class order by slapping palms with a willow branch and then demanding a thank you for the punishment.

Mr. Hnizdo, by his own confession, seems to have been solely responsible for the defeat of the Nazis, and soon the boys are bound up in hero worship.

Quirks of character and fate dictate the meandering story line: For example, whatever the truth of his other exploits, Hnizdo turns out to be an inveterate and indefatigable womanizer. In the same vein, Eda's father (played by screenwriter Sverak), the persnickety head engineer of the local power plant, turns out to be at the very least the heroic equal of Mr. Hnizdo.

Director Jan Sverak, the screenwriter's son, elevates atmosphere above all, so that a ride the boys hitch aboard a passing freight train becomes an excuse for an idyllic evocation of landscape and aging machinery.

Despite some conversations among the adults, few overt political points are made, though the sense of missed historical opportunities and blighted futures is, if muted, hard to ignore. This is nostalgia with a sharp point.

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Film export Prague Barrandov Film Studios, Creative Production Group Vydra, Dudova Production

Director Jan Sverak

Story-script Zdenek Sverak

Director of photography F.A. Brabec

Music Jiri Svoboda

Production designers Vladimir Labsky, Gabriela Kubenova

Editor Alois Fisarek

Color

Cast:

Eda Vaclav Jakoubek

Tonda Radoslav Budac

Igor Hnizdo Jan Triska

Mr. Soucek Zdenek Sverak

Running time -- 96 minutes

No MPAA rating

(c) The Hollywood Reporter...