Scott Glenn sports a truly horrific bowl cut in his first leading role, starring alongside Toshiro Mifune in the Frankenheimer-helmed The Challenge. Featuring a score by Jerry Goldsmith and a supporting cast that includes Sab Shimono and Clyde Kusatsu, the film is a pretty solid action entry though it wasn’t the film Glenn and Mifune…
Tag: boxer
Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951) – Charles Lamont
We’re now moving into the later years of the Universal Monsters and that means they tried to revitalize it and inject some new life into the series by leaning into the addition of the comedy team Bud Abbott and Lou Costello to the series. This time out, the classic comedians are a pair of newly…
Rocky Balboa (2006) – Sylvester Stallone
Stallone returns to write, direct and star in Rocky Balboa, which sees Stallone’s iconic character return to the boxing ring one last time. Watching all of the films this close together, this entry actually has some nice emotional resonance. Rocky (Stallone) is mourning the death of Adrian (Talia Shire), he’s stepped away from boxing for…
The Killers (1946) – Robert Siodmak
The next big title in DK Canada’s The Movie Book is the classic film, Laura. Having previously reviewed it, I dove into the What Else to Watch list for this title, and discovered this fantastic little noir film starring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. Two hitmen arrive in a small town and kill a gas…
The Twilight Zone (1963) – In Praise of Pip, Steel, and Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
It’s time to dive into the fifth and final season of The Twilight Zone. The Complete Series on blu-ray, available from Paramount Pictures unveils the first three episodes of the season this week, as the series returns to a twenty-five minute runtime per episode as opposed to the fifty minute episodes of the previous season….
Broken Blossoms (1919) – D.W. Griffith
I continue to explore some of the key works of D.W. Griffith with DK Book’s The Movie Book, and this time I dive into a fascinating tale that is perhaps best told through the silent format that marked Griffith’s time. Be warned there is a lot of racism in this film. It’s in the title….
The Twilight Zone (1960) – People Are Alike All Over, Execution and The Big Tall Wish
There’s the signpost up ahead… Paramount takes me even further into The Twilight Zone as I explore the next three episodes of the series. First up is People are Alike All Over written by Rod Serling, based on a short story by Paul Fairman. It stars one of my favourite character actors of all time,…
From Here to Eternity (1953) – Fred Zinnemann
An all star cast brings James Jones sprawling book to the big screen, and is my next recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book following my revisit with Casablanca for the Romance and Melodrama genre. Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, Ernest Borgnine, Claude Akins and Jack Warden bring…
*batteries not included (1987) – Matthew Robbins
The Sci-Fi Chronicles book brings me to the next stop on my continued exploration of the genre, and this time around I’m checking in with Steven Spielberg. I’ve covered some of his other films prior to this, and it also gives a few he served as executive producer on, including this film from ’87…
Quantum Leap (1989) – Star-Crossed and The Right Hand of God
Sam’s (Scott Bakuka) leaps really get under way this week with Star-Crossed. Penned by Deborah Pratt with an air date of 31 March, 1989, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping into an English Lit professor, Gerald Bryant, in an Ohio college on 15 June, 1972. The professor has a drinking problem, and is involved amorously…
The Mind Reels 