Assault on Precinct 13
L.A. Stories
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1h 30m
Directed by John Carpenter | 91 mins | 1976
As lean and brooding as its skeletal synth theme music, possessed from the first frame with an inimitable sense of ambient menace, Carpenter’s second feature is a marvel of action filmmaking economy. Its siege-on-an-LA-police-station plotline is inspired by Howard Hawks’s 1959 "Rio Bravo" but the film belongs unmistakably to a new and nastier generation of action filmmaking, clear from the moment an infamous ice cream truck visits early in the film. Whether for the first or tenth viewing, it just does not get any better than this.
Up Next in L.A. Stories
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Farewell, My Lovely
Leaving December 1
Directed by Dick Richards | 95 mins | 1975
In this handsome adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s 1940 novel, noir icon Robert Mitchum meets one of the genre’s quintessential figures, Detective Philip Marlowe. The search for a missing girlfriend and a stolen jade necklace brings hi... -
Rock 'n' Roll High School
Directed by Allan Arkush and Joe Dante | 93 mins | 1979
The moptop Ramones liberate a school from killjoy Principal Togar (Mary Woronov) in this sweetly rambunctious romp starring P.J. Soles (Halloween) as lead rebel of the student body. The innocent music-fueled anarchy (directed by a veteran of...
