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Tag: motion picture

Christmas in July: It isn’t the Coffee, It’s the Bunk.

Christmas in July: It isn’t the Coffee, It’s the Bunk.

Released: October 1940 Directed by: Preston Sturges Cast: Dick Powell, Ellen Drew, Raymond Walburn, Alexander Carr, William Demarest, Ernest Truex, and Franklin Pangborn as Radio Announcer. We don’t really have slogan writing contests anymore. For the winner they can be life changing. About a million years ago Wilma Flintstone and Betty Ruble won a trip for two to Hollyrock for their winning slogan ‘Mamma Leone’s Meatballs Don’t Bounce.’ (and they don’t) for Mamma Leone’s Meatballs. Their win put a strain…

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Suspense: Everything You’d Want From a Thriller.

Suspense: Everything You’d Want From a Thriller.

Released: July 1913 Directed by: Lois Weber, Phillips Smalley. Cast: Lois Weber, Valantine Paul, Sam Kaufman, Douglas Gerrard, and Lule Warrenton as the Maid. First time viewing. Suspense has everything you could want in a thriller. Tension, jeopardy, a villain without a conscience, a young mother in life threatening danger, a desperate husband trying to save his wife and baby, a car chase, trigger happy cops, sinister camera angles, nail-biting pacing, justice, a happy ending, and a maid who quits…

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Ministry of Fear: An Eccentric, Flawed Masterpiece.

Ministry of Fear: An Eccentric, Flawed Masterpiece.

Directed by: Fritz Lang Released: October 1944 Cast: Ray Milland, Marjorie Renolds, Carl Esmond, Hillary Brooke, Percy Waram, Dan Duryea, and Alan Napier as Dr. Forrester. Spoilers. There are a few. You could say Ministry of Fear is something of a flawed masterpiece. Simply put, Ministry of Fear is a wonderfully eccentric film where the climax can’t bear-up under the weight of the eccentricity. Just released from an insane asylum, Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) buys a train ticket to London….

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Masters of the Universe: A Step-by-Step Viewers Guide.

Masters of the Universe: A Step-by-Step Viewers Guide.

Directed by: Gary Goddard Released: August 1987 Cast: Dolph Lundgren, Frank Langella, Meg Foster, Bily Barty, Courteney Cox, Robert Duncan McNeill, Jon Cypher, Chelsea Field, James Tolkan, and Christina Pickles as Sorceress of Greyskull. First-time viewing. A Disclaimer of Sorts: I went into Masters of the Universe almost completely blind. I have some very basic knowledge of the cartoon series. The few episodes I’ve seen my focus was on Skeletor, possibly one of the most incompetent, most watchable super villains…

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Teenage Gang Debs: Into the Valley of NYC Underground Cinema.

Teenage Gang Debs: Into the Valley of NYC Underground Cinema.

Released: 1966 Directed by: Sande N. Johnsen Cast: Diane Conti, Linda Gale, Eileen Dietz, Robin Nolan, John Betis, George Winship, and Joey Naudic as Nino. Tubi Roulette is a little game I like to play sometimes. The rules are simple. First go on Tubi. Scroll around until you find a movie you’ve watched before, or piques your interest. Click on the movie and scroll down to the ‘You might also like’ list. From the ten films listed, pick one, preferably…

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The Bedford Incident: In the Shadow of the Cold War.

The Bedford Incident: In the Shadow of the Cold War.

Released: November 1965 Directed by: James B. Harris Cast: Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, James MacArthur, Martin Balsam, Wally Cox, Eric Portman, Michael Kane, Gary Cockrell, Phil Brown, and Donald Sutherland as Hospitalman Nerney. Some spoilers. Cold War movies usually lurk in the shadows. The shadowy alleyways of East or West Berlin or an endless Scandinavian night. The Bedford Incident exists in the shadows of the bridge of the USS Bedford, a US Navy destroyer patrolling the Denmark Strait off the…

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A Matter of Life and Death: Life and Death and So Much More.

A Matter of Life and Death: Life and Death and So Much More.

Released: December 1946 Directed by: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger Cast: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Roger Livesey, Marius Goring, Robert Coote, Kathleen Byron, Richard Attenborough, Abraham Sofaer, and Raymond Massey as Abraham Farlan. First time viewing. A Matter of Life and Death is a movie about love, but it also about so much more. Life and death to be sure. The afterlife without theology to gum up the works, but rather humanity as a whole needing to embrace and begin…

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The Cameraman: The Art of Unrequited Love.

The Cameraman: The Art of Unrequited Love.

Released: September 1928 Directed by: Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton Cast: Buster Keaton, Marceline Day, Harold Goodwin, Sidney Stacey, Harry Gribbon, Edward Brophy, Josephine the Monkey, and Vernon Dent as Man in Tight Bathing Suit. Love is frequently a theme of Buster Keaton’s films. Love of the unrequited variety, you know, loneliness, rejection, pain, physical and mental, and the ever popular little guy getting sand kicked in his face. The Cameraman is one such picture, and my favorite of Mr….

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Logan’s Run: The Utopian Sequel to Soylent Green?

Logan’s Run: The Utopian Sequel to Soylent Green?

Released: June 1976 Directed by: Michael Anderson Cast: Michael York, Jenny Agutter, Richard Jordan, Roscoe Lee Browne, Farrah Fawcett-Majors, and Peter Ustinov as Old Man. By 2274, humanity had overcome the over-population, starvation, and cataclysmic civilization destroying conflicts of the 2020s. Earth’s population now live in isolated domed mega-utopias, where all their needs are met. Gone are the days of feasting on Soylent Green, stepping over one another just to get down a flight of stairs, or being dumped into…

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Soylent Green: “How Did We Come to This?”

Soylent Green: “How Did We Come to This?”

Directed by: Richard Fleischer Released: April 1973 Cast: Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, Chuck Connors, Brock Peters, Paula Kelly, Joseph Cotton, Edward G. Robinson as Solomon Roth. As we sit here, in 2024, society is in rough shape. The gap between the wealthy and poor is ever increasing, homelessness is at an all-time high, governments and politicians are more interested in their own personal gain over the need of the people they were elected to serve, the gap between government and…

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