Category: Movies

Across the Pacific (1942) / Z-View

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Across the Pacific (1942)

Director: John Huston, Vincent Sherman (uncredited)

Screenplay: Richard Macaulay

Stars:  Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet

The Pitch: “Bogart, Astor and Greenstreet with Huston directing.’”

Tagline: None

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

After a dishonorable discharge, Rick Leland (Bogart) finds himself on a Japanese ship headed to the Orient.  On board Leland meets Dr. H.F.G. Lorenz (Greenstreet), a man with a shady past and
Alberta Marlow (Astor), a woman with a possible shared future.  As in many Bogart movies, all is not what it seems on the surface.

 

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Saboteur (1942) / Z-View

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Saboteur (1942)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Screenplay: Peter Viertel & Joan Harrison & Dorothy Parker

Stars:  Priscilla Lane, Robert Cummings and Otto Kruger

The Pitch: “Hitchcock want to make ‘Saboteur’”

Tagline: You’d like to say – IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE!… but every jolting scene is TRUE!!

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

After an aircraft manufacturing plant is destroyed by sabotage, an innocent worker, Barry Kane (Cummings) finds himself on the run from authorities who believe he was saboteur.  Kane’s efforts to clear himself lead him to a bigger plan of sabotage.  Can he prove his innocence and convince authorities of the next planned attack before it is too late?

Priscilla Lane and Robert Cummings make a great couple!

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Tarantula (1955) / Z-View

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Tarantula (1955)

Director: Jack Arnold

Screenplay: Robert M. Fresco and Martin Berkeley from a story by Jack Arnold and Robert M. Fresco.

Stars:  John Agar, Mara Corday, Leo G. Carroll and Clint Eastwood

The Pitch: “Let’s make a giant spider movie!”

Tagline: Bullets Can’t Stop It! Dynamite Can’t Kill It!

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Scientists working with experimental growth formulas accidently create and release on the world a giant spider!

Look for Clint Eastwood in one of his first roles.

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Crime of Passion (1957) / Z-View

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Crime of Passion (1957)

Director: Gerd Oswald

Screenplay: Jo Eisinger (original story and screenplay)

Stars:  Barbara Stanwyck, Sterling Hayden, Raymond Burr and Faye Wray

The Pitch: “Let’s make a film about a couple where one’s ambitions and lack of morals destroy them, but we’ll flip it so the female lead is the bad ‘guy’!”

Tagline: The stripped-of-shame story of a cop’s wife who committed one sin too many!

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Kathy (Stanwyck) is an ambitious newspaper columnist who falls for LA detective, Bill Doyle (Hayden), in a whirlwind romance that leads to marriage.  Soon enough Kathy realizes her husband is content with his rank and has no desire to rise to the top.  Kathy becomes jealous and envious of others and begins to plot a way to change the status quo.  That it involves infidelity and murder matters little to her.

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Cabin Fever (2002) / Z-View

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Cabin Fever (2002)

Director: Eli Roth

Screenplay: Eli Roth & Randy Pearlstein from a story by Eli Roth

Stars:  Jordan Ladd, Rider Strong and James DeBello

The Pitch: “Let’s make a horror movie about college kids and a flesh-eating virus!”

Tagline: Terror… In the flesh.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Five college kids head to a remote cabin where they encounter a strange flesh-eating virus.

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58 Things We Learned from James Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” Commentary

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 58 Things We Learned from James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Commentary.  Here are three of my favorites…

24. Glen Campbell’s “Southern Nights” was one of his favorite songs as a child, and he recalls the joy of attending a 4th of July party a couple years ago “at Jane Seymour’s house of all places” where he got to meet Campbell and listen to some live music from the man.

42. Stan Lee with the Watchers “doesn’t mean Stan Lee is a Watcher,”, but “who knows what Stan Lee is.”

55. Stallone asked how his line at Yondu’s viking funeral should be delivered, and Gunn replied “‘Have you seen the movie Babe?’ and he said ‘Yeah!’ I’m like this is you saying ‘That’ll do pig.’” My favorite part of this anecdote is the image of Stallone watching Babe.

 

Frailty (2001) / Z-View

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Frailty (2001)

Director: Bill Paxton

Screenplay: Brent Hanley

Stars:  Bill Paxton, Matthew McConaughey, Powers Boothe

The Pitch: “Bill Paxton wants to direct ‘Frailty’ – let’s do it!”

Tagline: There are demons among us

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Adam and Fenton are young brothers, being raised by their single parent dad. Dad is a hard-working loving parent and all is well with the family… until one night when their father wakes them up to reveal that he had been visited by an Angel.  The Angel told dad that demons live among them and they have been chosen to slay them.

Fenton realizes his father had gone crazy, while Adam is convinced their dad was visited by an Angel.  Fenton hopes this will pass, but when dad brings home a normal looking man who dad claims to be a demon and kills him, Fenton knows this is just the start…

Frailty is a classic that gets better with repeated viewings.  Paxton’s acting and direction (the only film he directed!) is point on.  Powers Boothe is, as always, excellent.  This may be Matthew McConaughey’s best performance.  Love the twists and turns.

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Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) / Z-View

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Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

Director: Frank Lloyd

Screenplay: Talbot Jennings & Jules Furthman and Carey Wilson based on the book by Charles Nordhoff        and James Norman Hall

Stars:  Charles Laughton, Clark Gable and Franchot Tone

The Pitch: “Let’s turn Robert C. O’Brien’s novel into a movie!”

Tagline: Clark Gable as the daring mutineer in the screen’s most exciting adventure story!

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

The classic tale of Fletcher Christian’s mutiny against the sadistic Captain Bligh!

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The 100 Greatest Comedies of All Time

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BBC Culture polled 253 film critics from 52 countries to determine The 100 Greatest Comedies of All Time.  While I question Pulp Fiction as one of the all time greatest comedies, I’ll play along.  Using just their list, here are my top six…

  1. Step Brothers (Adam McKay, 2008)

  2. Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra, 1944)

  3. Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974)

  4. Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks, 1974)

  5. Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, 1980)\

  6. Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

Z for Zachariah (2015) / Z-View

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Z for Zachariah (2015)

Director: Craig Zobel

Screenplay: Nissar Modi based on the novel by Robert C. O’Brien

Stars:  Chiwetel Ejiofor, Chris Pine and Margot Robbie

The Pitch: “Let’s turn Robert C. O’Brien’s novel into a movie!”

Tagline: After the end of the world she thought she was alone. She was wrong.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

After an apocalyptic event that has wiped out humans, a woman who thought herself alone, finds a dying man.  She nurses him back to health and they begin to make a life together on her family’s farmland.  All is well until a young, handsome man shows up looking for refuge.

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