Stacy Keach as an American trucker for hire in Australia plying the open highways that connect the continent's cities with his Dingo for company shows what a friend a dog can be both as someone to incessantly talk to and as the silent type who doesn't let anything escape his notice. Jamie Lee Curtis's brief role is definitely worth it for the witty and kind of sexy dialog between her and Keach as he parks his rig in the middle…
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Invitation to a Gunfighter 1964
Yul Brynner as a gunman hired by sleazy Pat Hingle to kill rebel ex-Confederate soldier George Segal in a western that definitely digs into race, sex, and corruption of the west's darker side. Set in a town in New Mexico, the whites live on one side and the Mexicans on another side and the general store will not sell them ammunition. Brynner is a mysterious gunman from New Orleans with a checkered racial past while a trio made up of…
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Once Upon a Time in the West 1968
Within the panoramic vistas and the haunting melody lies a taut story which maybe doesn't need the two hours and a half to tell but each scene is so well done, which ones would you cut out? The story starts once Claudia Cardenale as Jill arrives at the property she'll inherit but another story has already begun before that in the film's brilliant opening. In fact a lot of stories are already in progress and the film seems to drop…
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[REC] 2007
[REC] is kind of a classic in the style of found footage horror. It starts off innocently enough in a Barcelona fire department where the host and her cameraman will go out with one of the trucks on a call and then make that into an episode of a television program called While You Were Sleeping. The call, however, sounds kind of strange, an old woman is having a breakdown in her apartment and screaming, and then she goes full…
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The Case of the Bloody Iris 1972
You know how well this works when you realize how it doesn't waste time building up the characters in the hope that you'll care about them and therefore become emotionally invested in the movie. It's kind of a breezy giallo with swinging characters in it that floats on air. A lot of that is the soundtrack by Bruno Nicolai as background to cool scenes of Edwige Fenech. She's amazing here. Ditto George Hilton, suave dude. It's classy and makes you…
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Where Eagles Dare 1968
At two and a half hours Where Eagles Dare can be too much of a good thing but in reality it's all good. Seriously. Incredible cinematography of snowy nights in the Bavarian Alps looks crisp and rich and when the action scenes come they're amazing. Richard Burton does action like he's a pro at it but he's still that intense actor and he goes well with Clint Eastwood as the cool American on the vital mission. Lots of gratuituous gunfights…
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The Unseen 1980
Happy to say I've finally seen The Unseen in which three women who work for a tv station are sent to Solvang, CA to cover the town's annual Danish heritage parade and festivities. Since all the motel rooms have been taken, they are forced to look farther away where Sydney Lassick runs a hotel that's been converted into a museum but offers the ladies a room at his farmhouse where he lives with his sister. The Unseen is also there…
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Insidious: Chapter 2 2013
The sequel starts with the son endangered by an evil spirit that automatically creates a mix of sympathy for him and fear that it will get him and he'll never come back to his family again. A malevolent force floats through our dreams and latches on to one of us while we're sleeping and dreaming, hungry for your or my life. That scenario is kind of a nice way into the audience's psyche. Fear of the dark never really goes…
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Report to the Commissioner 1975
A gritty tough 70s New York cop drama featuring Michael Moriarty as a rookie detective assigned to partner with Yahpett Kotto. Moriarty's character is more influenced by the 60s but still a detective who's involved in a case in which they've omitted to tell him vital details. The Report is the official account. The street level story is vivid af, too, with Bob Balaban as a homeless double amputee on his creeper dodging heavy NY traffic. With Moriarty as the focus the movie is more about the network of the NYPD devouring a new detective, although the juicy cynicism doesn't entirely carry through to the ending.
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Ladybug Ladybug 1963
The emotional reactions of a group of children and a teacher who is leading them to their homes from a rural elementary school after an alarm goes off signifying imminent nuclear attack kind of captured in an intense black and white 1960s psychological style of closeups and dialog. The teacher wore high heels that day and the long walk is killing her feet. You can feel her agony. Between her ordeal and the kids half understanding what's happening and half…
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Bloodsport 1988
JCVD learns the physical, mental, and spiritual realms of martial arts from a martial arts master and then honors his mentor's legacy by fighting in the underground martial arts fest Kumite in Hong Kong. The color of the event is visual and emotional and this film with its awesome photography and ceaseless non-stop editing of the crowd, the martial arts fights, and the venue makes you dizzy almost. You don't really see Van Damme's physique until he takes his shirt…
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The Public Enemy 1931
Welliam Wellman's film was made in 1931 and is set mostly, after the parts up to where they're teenagers, in 1920, the year prohibation took hold making booze much more lucrative, and not necessarily just for hoods. It feels the need to post a Crime Doesn't Pay message on because everyone was dealing in valuable cases of illicit booze. Coming out in 1931, the age of the movie and the time it's set in are almost born together. Even the…