Category: Movies

Miami Blues (1990) / Z-View

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Miami Blues (1990)

Director:  George Armitage

Screenplay:  George Armitage from a novel by  Charles Willeford

Stars:   Fred Ward, Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Charles Napier and Paul Gleason.

The Pitch: “How about a crime movie based in Miami?”

Tagline: “Real badge. Real gun. Fake cop.”

 

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Ex-con, Frederick J. Frenger Jr. [Baldwin] heads to Miami for a fresh start.  A fresh start means stealing and conning.  When Frenger ends up with a cop’s gun and badge, he finds that it makes stealing and conning easier.  The cop [Ward] makes it his life’s mission to track down the thief using his identity.  Oh, and there’s a sweet prostitute [Leigh], too.

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Walter Hill and Matz Team for Triggerman!

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That’s a cover detail from Triggerman, a new crime comic coming from Hard Case Crime and Titan Comics.

Triggerman will be written by Walter (“The Warriors”) Hill with art by Matz.

In the mean streets of Chicago, a convict is thrown headfirst into a life of bloodshed and bullets to save the girl he left behind…

I love the sound and look.  I’ll definitely be pulling the trigger on Triggerman.

Sources: Flickering Myth and Down the Tubes.

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955) / Z-View

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Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

Director:  Charles Lamont

Screenplay:  John Grant from a story by Lee Leob

Stars:  Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Marie Windsor, Michael Ansara and Richard Deacon.

The Pitch: “Hey, Abbott and Costello Haven’t Met the Mummy yet!”

Tagline: “It has been said that a man’s best friend is his mummy…”

 

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Abbott and Costello are in Egypt… and they meet The Mummy.  Hilarity [ok, a fair amount of laughs] follow.

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16 High-Flying Facts About “The Rocketeer”

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Stacy Conradt and Mental_Floss present 16 High-Flying Facts About The Rocketeer.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. IT WAS ORIGINALLY A COMIC BOOK.
In 1982, artist Dave Stevens created a comic book character called The Rocketeer, inspired by pulp characters and series from the 1930s through 1950s. Though originally intended to be a secondary strip in a more popular comic called Starslayer, the quirky character quickly proved his star power. Stevens’ Rocketeer was so popular, in fact, that the movie was optioned just a year later.

5. DISNEY WANTED JOHNNY DEPP FOR THE LEAD ROLE.
Billy Campbell was hired for the starring role after Johnny Depp turned it down—and Campbell’s agent played a part in getting Depp to nix the part. “As it happened, my agent’s office was right next to Johnny Depp’s agent’s office,” Campbell later said. “My agent called me one day all excited and he said, ‘Tracy is about to have a meeting with Johnny about whether to do Rocketeer or not, and she asked me to join in on the meeting. I’ll call you back.’ So, he went in on the meeting and he brilliantly convinced Johnny Depp that this was exactly not the kind of movie that he should be doing.”

Vincent D’Onofrio was also offered the lead at one point, but turned it down because he wasn’t sure it would fit with his image.

15. MORE MOVIES WERE IN THE WORKS.
This news is bittersweet for fans: Before the movie flopped at the box office, a sequel (and maybe even a trilogy) was in the works. “There was a lot of talk of a sequel on June 20, 1991, but there wasn’t any on the 22nd,” Johnston said in 2011.

The Killers (1946) / Z-View

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The Killers (1946)

Director:  Robert Siodmak

Screenplay:  Anthony Veiller from a story by Ernest Hemingway

Stars:  Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien and William Conrad.

The Pitch: “Let’s make a movie based on Hemingway’s The Killers.”

Tagline: “One Moment with Her…And He Gambled His LUCK…LOVE…and His LIFE!”

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Two hit men show up in a small town to kill a gas station attendant known as “Swede” [Lancaster].  When warned the hitmen are in town, Swede thanks the man but refuses to run.  He lays back down and waits for their arrival, a totally defeated man.

The hit men arrive.  Kill him and leave.

Insurance investigator Reardon [O’Brien] gets the case and slowly begins to unravel the mystery of why hit men were sent to kill a small town nobody.  What follows is a story of mobsters, big time robberies, double-crosses and in the middle of it all a beautiful woman.

The opening scene – of the hitmen at the diner is a favorite and sets the tone for a classic movie!

Rating: 4 of 5 stars.

“The Mountain Men” (1980) starring Charlton Heston and Brian Keith / Z-View

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“The Mountain Men” (1980)

Director:  Richard Lang

Screenplay: Fraser Clarke Heston

Stars:  Charlton Heston, Brian Keith, Victoria Racimo and John Glover.

Tagline:  Alone… each is a bombshell.  Together… they’re dynamite.

The Overview:

Two aging mountain men survive in a world that is changing and will soon leave them behind.  If the hostile conditions of the frontier don’t kill ’em, the Indians or the corn whiskey might.

Thoughts:  Beware of Spoilers…

I remember seeing this movie back in the early 80’s on HBO and loving it.  I recently revisited it and while I still enjoyed it, The Mountain Men wasn’t the movie I remember loving so much.

The interplay between Charlton Heston and Brian Keith [who steals every scene is in] is worth the price of admission. Heston and Keith had worked together on the 1953 film Arrowhead.

It’s fun seeing a young John Glover in his first screen appearance.

The Mountain Men was director Richard Lang’s first time helming a feature film.

The Mountain Men‘s screenwriter, Fraser Heston, is Charlton Heston’s son. The Mountain Men screenplay was Fraser Heston’s feature film debut.

The Indians are too Hollywood looking now and some of the scenes don’t hold up as well.  Still I liked it a lot, just not as much as I remembered loving it.

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It Follows (2014) / Z-View

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It Follows (2014)

Director:  David Robert Mitchell

Screenplay: David Robert Mitchell

Stars:    Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, and Olivia Luccardi.

The Pitch: “Let’s make a low budget horror movie – they almost always make money!”

Tagline: “It doesn’t think. It doesn’t feel. It doesn’t give up.”

 

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

After having sex with a boy she really likes, Jay [Monroe] learns that he has passed a curse on to her. [Great choice in guys, Jay.]

“It” [the thing of the curse] will follow her, always walking but able to take different human forms and if it catches her, it will kill her.

Suddenly everyone walking towards her seems to have evil intent.  And at least one does!

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Lone Survivor (2013) / Z-View

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Lone Survivor (2013)

Director:  Peter Berg

Screenplay: Peter Berg based on the book by Marcus Luttrell and Patrick Robinson

Stars:    Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster and Eric Bana.

The Pitch: “Let’s make a movie based on the best-selling book Lone Survivor.”

Tagline: “Based on True Acts of Courage”

 

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

A Navy Seal team sent behind enemy lines on a mission to capture or kill a Taliban leader is accidentally discovered by a goat herder and his teenage son.  The soldiers faced with a dilemma, kill innocent people [and face military prison] or let them go and take their chances on being discovered.

The soldiers let them go and then find themselves outnumbered and under attack by superior numbers.  The movie’s title doesn’t leave much room for a real happy ending, does it?

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13 Fascinating Facts About “The Bridge on the River Kwai”

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Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss present 13 Fascinating Facts About The Bridge on the River Kwai.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. ITS OSCAR FOR BEST SCREENPLAY WENT TO SOMEONE WHO DIDN’T WRITE IT.
The process of adapting Pierre Boulle’s French-language novel Le Pont de la Riviere Kwai was difficult (more on that later), but the two writers ultimately responsible for it were Carl Foreman (High Noon) and Michael Wilson (A Place in the Sun). Neither of them got credit, though, as The Bridge on the River Kwai was released during the three-year period when people who’d ever been Communists (or who refused to answer questions about it before Congress) were ineligible for Academy Awards. The screenplay was instead credited to the novelist, Boulle—which was quite a feat, since he didn’t speak or read English. (He didn’t attend the Oscars, either.) In 1985, the Academy officially recognized Foreman and Wilson as the screenwriters and posthumously awarded the Oscar to them.

4. DAVID LEAN NEEDED THE WORK.
Though he’d already earned five Oscar nominations (three for directing, two for adapting the Dickens novels) and would soon be widely celebrated for Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965), at this stage, Lean was in trouble. He’d just been through a costly divorce from actress Ann Todd. According to one biographer, he was “broke and needed work; he had even pawned his gold cigarette case.” This, plus the fact that he loved to travel, plus the fact that shooting a film in Southeast Asia would be good for him tax-wise, motivated him to accept a project that was bound to be grueling.

10. WILLIAM HOLDEN GOT A BETTER DEAL THAN THE DIRECTOR.
Lean wanted Holden, a big star and recent Oscar winner (for Stalag 17), to play American prisoner Major Shears, over the objections of producer Spiegel, who wanted Cary Grant. Once Spiegel relented, he realized Holden was a box office draw and offered him a great deal: $300,000 salary (about $2.5 million in 2016 dollars), plus 10 percent of the gross. Lean only got $150,000 himself, but he always said Holden was worth it.

Submerged (2015) / Z-View

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Submerged (2015)

Director:  Steven C. Miller

Screenplay: Scott Milam

Stars:   Jonathan Bennett, Talulah Riley, Rosa Salazar and Mario Van Peebles.

The Pitch: “What about a movie with a group of 20-somethings stuck in a submerged car with people waiting to kill them above?”

Tagline: “You can’t scream and hold your breath at the same time.”

 

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Late one evening after a night of partying, a group of 20-somethings are traveling home in a limo when it is forced off a bridge.  The limo sinks to the bottom of the river and water slowly begins to fill the car.  When one of them tries to escape and get help, he is killed.  The trapped kids realize that there are people topside waiting to kill them.

As the water level rises they try to figure out why they are targets and if there is any way to survive.

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Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) / Z-View

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Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Director:  George Miller

Screenplay: George Miller and Brendan McCarthy and Nick Lathouris

Stars:  Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult and Zoë Kravitz.

The Pitch: “George Miller has written and will direct a NEW Road Warrior movie!”

Tagline: “THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THE MAD”

 

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Max Rockatansky [Hardy], a loner, surviving in an apocalyptic waste land is captured by a cult who plan to drain his blood for their warriors.  Max finds him teamed with Furiosa [Theron] and five women slaves in their escape across the desert.

Miller creates an amazing action adventure that is insanely mesmerizing to watch — the crazy action, the insane stunts, the beautiful cinematography, and unique world — I love this film!

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Terminator Genisys (2015) / Z-View

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Terminator Genisys (2015)

Director:  Alan Taylor

Screenplay: Laeta Kalogridis & Patrick Lussier

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Clarke, Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney,  J.K. Simmons and Courtney B. Vance.

The Pitch: “Schwarzenegger will come back for another Terminator movie!”

Tagline: “The rules have been reset.”

 

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

We all know the story, right?  In the future Kyle Reese is sent back to the present to protect Sarah Connor so that her yet unborn son will one day grow up to save humankind from machines.

Now see the tagline.  The rules have been reset.  Things happen as before only slightly differently… or in some cases very differently.  While this is fun for a while for fans of the series; it creates the same problems that all movies/shows with diverging timelines have.  What’s it matter?

You like Kyle Reese better in the original?  Different timeline.  You don’t like this Sarah Conner?  Different timeline.  Which time line should we care about?  Ultimately, I lose interest because things can be forgotten, changed or wiped out — just move to a new timeline.

Still, Terminator Genysis was fun enough if taken as a standalone story.  As for me, Terminator and Terminator 2 are the “real” Terminator timelines.  End of story… until the next sequel.

 

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