John Saxon died yesterday of pneumonia. He was 83. Saxon is best known to fans for his role as Roper in Enter the Dragon, but that was just one of his nearly 200 acting credits.
Saxon began is career in the mid 1950s playing teen idol parts. In the 60s, Saxon alternated between movies and guest starring television roles. In 1972, Saxon co-starred with Clint Eastwood in Joe Kidd and the following year with Bruce Lee and Jim Kelly in Enter the Dragon. Saxon continued to alternate between movie and tv roles for the rest of his career. Any time Saxon was in the production, you know it got just better.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to John Saxon’s family, friends and fans.
The Prey – check out the poster and trailer. It definitely has a Most Dangerous Game feel (and one that has been copied many times) but when done right, these films are fun.
Undercover Chinese cop Xin (newcomer Gu Shangwei), is on a secret international mission when a surprise raid puts him in a remote Cambodian jungle prison that plays by its own rules.Ruthless warden (Vithaya Pansringarm) sells prisoners as human prey for rich hunters looking for thrills in the jungle.
After years of hunting down ruthless criminals, Xin suddenly finds himself running for his life. If Xin manages to survive this sadistic game, he’ll walk out of the jungle the same way he came in: as a free man. If Xin fails, he’s just another hunting trophy.
Due to her controversial methods, young doctor Tatiana Yurievna (Oksana Akinshina) is on the precipice of losing her medical license. Her career may not be over, though. After she’s recruited by the military, Tatiana is brought to a secure science research facility to assess a very special case, that of Konstantin Sergeyevich (Pyotr Fyodorov), a cosmonaut who survived a mysterious space accident and has returned to Earth with a unique condition: there’s something living inside of him that only shows itself late at night. The military has nefarious plans for it. Tatiana wants to stop it from killing Konstantin. And the creature itself thrives on destruction.
The Bay of Silence stars Claes Bang (who was excellent in Dracula), Olga Kurylenko and Brian Cox. Above is the poster and below the trailer.
Will believes his wife Rosalind is innocent of their son’s suspected murder, only to discover the devastating truth behind her past links her to another unsolved crime.
Starring: Claes Bang, Olga Kurylenko and Brian Cox
Directed by: Paula van der Oest
The poster and trailer for Hard Kill are here. Pretty generic looking on both counts, don’t ya think?
The work of billionaire tech CEO Donovan Chalmers is so valuable that he hires mercenaries to protect it, and a terrorist group kidnaps his daughter just to get it.
Here we have the Project Power poster and trailer which asks, “What would you risk for five minutes of power?” I’m not sure, but I will risk a couple of hours to check out this movie.
What would you risk for five minutes of pure power?
On the streets of New Orleans, word begins to spread about a mysterious new pill that unlocks superpowers unique to each user. The catch: You don’t know what will happen until you take it. While some develop bulletproof skin, invisibility, and super strength, others exhibit a deadlier reaction. But when the pill escalates crime within the city to dangerous levels, a local cop (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) teams with a teenage dealer (Dominique Fishback) and a former soldier fueled by a secret vendetta (Jamie Foxx) to fight power with power and risk taking the pill in order to track down and stop the group responsible for creating it.
Stars: Jack O’Connell, Michelle Dockery, Scoot McNairy, Merritt Wever, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Tantoo Cardinal, Jeff Daniels, Sam Waterson and Keith Jardine.
The Pitch: “Scott Frank, the screenwriter of Logan and A Walk Among the Tombstones has a screenplay called Godless. It’s really good, plus he’ll direct it!”
Tagline: Welcome to no man’s land.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
The wild west in the 1880s was at times a Godless place.
Roy Goode is on the run. He’s being hunted by the notorious outlaw, Frank Griffin and his gang of marauders. Griffin has let it be known that he will kill any person, family or members of a town that provide comfort or safe passage to Goode. Although that sounds like an idle threat, every man, woman and child living in the town of Creed was brutally murdered by Griffin and his gang when they learned Goode had spent time there.
Now Goode, recovering from an injury, has found himself in LaBelle, a small town where a mining accident killed almost every man living there. If Goode leaves town, Griffin and his gang will still kill the townspeople. If Goode stays, he’ll die with them. One thing is for sure… when Griffin and his gang get to LaBelle there will be a reckoning.
I can’t sing the praises for Godless enough. Scott Frank, the writer and director has created a classic. Godless features a big cast and each role was filled perfectly. Each character feels real and we’re provided their backstory seamlessly as the story moves forward.
The story is told in 7 episodes and although I hated to see Godless end, the story was done. An advantage of being a self-contained story (and Frank makes excellent use of) is that all bets are off on who lives and who dies.
Godless is one of those rare shows/movies that resonated with me in all aspects and gets my highest recommendation.
Mark Birrell at ScreenRant looked at Metacritic ratings for all eight Rocky movies. I thought it would be interesting to compare Metacritics’ rankings with mine. Your mileage may differ.
Dan Grant, at Top 10 Films, in honor of the 45th anniversary of the release of the first summer blockbuster presents: 45 Things About “Jaws” You Might Not Know. Before you click over, here are three of my favorite Jaws facts as well as my thoughts on each…
4. Richard Dreyfuss’ casting – Richard Dreyfuss originally turned down the role of Hooper because he thought making the movie would be a pain in the ass. After he saw himself on big screen in the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz he thought he was so awful that his career would be over and he immediately called Steven Spielberg to ask if he could have the role.
(Funny the difference a day or perceived poor performance can make. – Craig)
9. Percy Rodriguez’s iconic trailer voice-over – Percy Rodriguez did the voice-over in the trailer for Jaws. When the producers first came to him, they wanted an upbeat, happy-sounding and almost adventurous voice-over for the trailer. It was Percy’s idea to have a darker and brooding and ominous sounding tone. It worked a treat.
He eventually got his way and many people credit lines in the trailer like “there is a creature that is alive today which has survived millions of years of evolution” and “it was as if God created the devil and gave him (dramatic pause) Jaws”, as major reasons why people flocked to the theatre to see it.
(Watching the “Jaws” trailer attached to this fact at Grant’s post it reminded me of how, in the pre-internet days, important a trailer was to the success of a film. The “Jaws” trailer made you want to see the film. Much credit needs to go to Percy Rodriguez. He was right to push for a darker, more ominous tone! – Craig)
14. Dreyfuss’ surprise – Richard Dreyfuss was so disillusioned with the movie that after his time on set was done, he proceeded to trash it on several different talk shows in the United States. But when he saw the film opening day, after he left the theatre, he jumped into Roy Scheider’s arms and exclaimed “He did it! He did it!” Roy asked him who he meant and he said “Spielberg, Spielberg actually did it!”
(Sounds like Dreyfuss was going through a period of seeing the glass half-full. He only agreed to star in “Jaws” because he thought he was so terrible in his previous film that he wouldn’t be offered more roles. Then filming wraps on “Jaws” and Dreyfess downplays how good it is… until he sees it with an audience. – Craig)
Here are the poster and trailer for Devil’s Night: Dawn of the Nain Rouge. Yeah, the poster is pretty generic and the movie looks like it would be the second feature at a drive-in, but sometimes those second features were fun!
DEVIL’S NIGHT DAWN OF THE NAIN ROUGE Exclusive Trailer
PLOT: A military veteran who returns home, works in law enforcement and she’s assigned to a supernatural case that’s surrounded by urban myth and legend.
CAST: Jesi Jensen, Nathan Mathers, Sam Logan Khaleghi
