June 5 - 11, 2021

 

To answer these trivia questions, please email me at scinema@earthlink.net.

Brain Teasers:

Which movie starring Richard Harrison is virtually a remake of BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK?

UNA DONNA PER 7 BASTARDI.

Which Italian director went from making his second Western to making a dramatic film featuring Richard Harrison?

No one has answered this question yet.

What artifact gives away that Lee Van Cleef was at the massacre of John Philip Law's family in DA UOMO A UOMO?

Tom Betts, Angel Rivera, Rick Garibaldi and George Grimes knew that it was a chain around the neck with a skull.

What artifact links Lee Van Cleef to the murder of Rosemary Dexter in PER QUALCHE DOLLARO IN PIU?

Tom Betts, Angel Rivera, Rick Garibaldi and George Grimes knew that it was a musical watch.

What is the hero's name in POCHI DOLLARI PER DJANGO?

Tom Betts, Angel Rivera, Rick Garibaldi and George Grimes knew that it was Regan.

And now for some new brain teasers:

By what name is Leo Coleman better known?

By what name is Peter Carter better known?

By what name is Andrew Rey better known?

Name the movies from which these images came.

Tom Betts, Rick Garibaldi, Bertrand van Wonterghem and George Grimes identified last week's photo of Angelo Boscariol and Richard Harrison in EL ROJO.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

George Grimes and Bertrand van Wonterghem identified last week's photo of Gordon Mitchell in LA VENDETTA DI SPARTACUS, aka REVENGE OF THE GLADIATORS.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

George Grimes identified last week's frame grab of George Hilton and Antoine Saint-John in L'ASSASSINO E COSTRETTO AD UCCIDERE ANCORA, aka THE KILLER MUST KILL AGAIN.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

George Grimes identified last week's photo of Ken Watanabe in THE LAST SAMURAI.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

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I am interested in knowing what movies you have watched and what you enjoyed or not. So please send me an email at scinema@earthlink.net if you'd like to share. Here's what I watched last week:

Enjoyed:

SAM COOKE LEGEND (2003) - Allen Klein has never seemed as sympathetic as he does in this documentary - which was made by his company.

Mildly enjoyed:

Ernie Pyle: Life In the Trenches (2020)

Midsomer Murders "Last Man Out" (2017)

THE OSIRIS CHILD: SCIENCE FICTION VOLUME ONE (2016) - Writing and producing partners Shane Abbess and Brian Cachia are certainly ambitious Australian filmmakers, with Abbess also directing and Cachia doing the music. They've come up with a lot of plot and characters for this film, which they seem to have envisioned as just the beginning of a longer saga. Unfortunately, that means that this film has an unresolved ending and perhaps too much going on for comfort. Fracturing the storytelling by putting in chapter headings and alternating story perspectives prevents the film from having a straightforward thrust which might have made for a more satisfying viewing experience. Presently, it doesn't look like Volume Two is going to happen, so satisfaction may never occur. As General Lynex, Rachel Griffiths joins the list of accomplished female actors who've played Science Fiction villains - Julianne Moore in THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY, Kate Winslet in DIVERGENT and Naomi Watts in INSURGENT. 

A QUIET PLACE (2018) - This is easily the best movie of which Michael Bay had any part. Bryan Woods and Scott Beck came up with the story a couple years earlier while in college and is less of a science fiction thriller than a drama about parental responsibility and loss. How much of that is the contribution of co-writer and director John Krasinski is unknown, but having a film which grossed over $340 million is certainly good for his resume. While certainly effective, the film does suffer from elements which seem overly contrived and arbitrary.

THE RAPE OF RECY TAYLOR (2017) - One night in 1944, Hugo Wilson and six other teenage slugs of European ancestry drove around Abbeville, Alabama looking for a black woman to rape. They eventually settled on Recy Taylor, a new mother walking home from church. After four hours, they released her, but their abuse resulted in her never being able to conceive again. After she reported the rape to the local white deputy sheriff - Lewey Corbitt, a relative of the plantation owner who used to own Recy's family, Wilson admitted to driving the car, but said that the other six men - Dillard York, Billy Howerton, Herbert Lovett, Luther Lee, Joe Culpepper and Robert Gamble committed the abuse. After the Taylor house was firebombed, Recy, her husband and child, moved into her brother's house. When the NAACP was informed of the incident, investigator Rosa Parks came to see Recy's family. Corbitt ordered her out of town. When Parks returned two weeks later, Corbitt bodily threw her out of the house. Eventually, Parks moved Racy and her family to Montgomery, Alabama to continue their efforts to get justice. Parks helped to organize the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor, which gained national recognition - so of course the F.B.I. labeled them communists. But after two all-white-men grand juries failed to indict any of the rapists, the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor dropped her name from the organization and pressed on to other causes. The film points out that after being used as a symbol, the activists pretty much ignored Recy after she was no longer of use. Many of the rapists ended up joining the military and some had distinguished careers. Recy's case was revived when Danielle L. McGuire wrote the book AT THE DARK END OF THE STREET: BLACK WOMEN, RAPE AND RESISTANCE - A NEW HISTORY OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT FROM ROSA PARKS TO THE RISE OF BLACK POWER. This renewed interest led to the Alabama Legislature in 2011 issuing an official apology "for its failure to prosecute her attackers". McGuire appeared in the film to champion how the equal rights movement needed to more fully acknowledge the contribution black women made to the cause. Nancy Buirski directed this documentary, which used a lot of clips from old "race movies" to illustrate her portrait of violence against black women in the South - but rather than making the film more "cinematic", it tended to distract from the information being given by the commentators. There is no denying the power of the story being told, and it is particularly appreciated that Buirski provides information about what happened to the attackers.

Did not enjoy:

aTYPICAL WEDNESDAY (2020) - "See you next Wednesday" was a running joke in movies directed by John Landis. Here, Wednesday is the day that writer/director/star J. Lee sees his therapist, played by Michael Ealy. Wednesday is also the day that 9 year old Cooper J. Friedman sees his therapist. One day, about 30 minutes into the film, Lee finds Friedman sitting outside of the building. Friedman says that his grandmother forgot to pick him up after his session, so Lee offers to drive him home. Soon the thirty year old physical trainer and the troubled boy bond trading stories about how miserable their lives are. "I don't even know how you get arrested for resisting arrest. That makes like zero sense." J. Lee evidences directorial competence.

AIR (2015) - The surface of the Earth is uninhabitable due to chemical warfare. A select few people are being kept alive in cryogenic sleep in underground bunkers. Norman Reedus and Djimon Hounsou are maintenance workers who are awoken for two hours every six months to perform routine inspections. When Hounsou's cryogenic bed catches fire, the two seek replacement parts and discover that most of the other facilities have been destroyed. Reedus tests out Hounsou's repaired bed and is nearly killed when it malfunctions. Hounsou delays in rescuing Reedus, which Reedus interprets as a murder atttempt. Reedus finds a gun and chases Hounsou around for a bit, until Hounsou kills him with a lethal injection. In the end, the equipment reads that the outside air is no longer a threat and everyone awakens from cryo sleep. Hounsou, who has spent the entire movie speaking with an hallucination of wife Sandrine Holt, finally gets to hug her in the end. Here's a low-budget idea. Two men are in an underground bunker, and when they venture away from the main set, the other areas are illuminated only with the beams of their flashlights. Now, all the filmmakers need is interesting dialogue and incidents to keep audience attention. Unfortunately, co-writer and director Christian Cantamessa, known as a video game designer, failed to do that, but he succeeded in getting Robert Kirkman of The Walking Dead to sign on as one of the producers. 

ANTHROPOID (2016) - The title sounded to me like a Science Fiction film, but this is actually a film about Operation Anthropoid; the mission to kill Reinhard Heydrich, considered the third highest ranking Nazi during World War II. I can't think of any movies about Czechoslovakia during that war, so I was quite surprised to find that Wikipedia had a page just on movies featuring his character. Why the Czech, British and French producers decided to make this movie, co-written and directed by Sean Ellis, is a mystery. The nations which would come to be known as the "Allies" gifted Czechoslovakia to the Nazis in 1938, but by 1942 the Czechoslovak exile government resided in London. The movie suggests that two exile Czech soldiers being parachuted into their old country on a mission to kill the Nazi running the country as a way to prove the worth of Czechoslovakia to the Allies. They succeeded in the assassination, and then held off a siege of the Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral in Prague for six hours before dying. It is estimated that the Nazis murdered about 5,000 civilians in reprisal. This is hardly feel good movie material. Are we meant to celebrate the sacrifice of most of the cast - including Cillian Murphy, Jamie Dornan, Charlotte Le Bon, Anna Geislerova and Toby Jones - in killing this one man? Would this movie be more interesting if it had been made by a Czech director with English subtitles? If the idea was to make a film accessible to a wide audience, the filmmakers ended up making a film that seemed too long and too repetitive of material seen before in other movies about resistance to the Nazis.

BLOODLUST! (1961) - Who is Ralph Brooke and why did he think it was a good idea to remake THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME with added black & white gore? The most interesting element of this movie is seeing Robert Reed right before he became a TV star on The Defenders. Unfortunately, most now know him from The Brady Bunch. 

CALIFORNIA CONQUEST (1952) - According to this film, in the 1840s the Mexican territory of California was being sought after by the English, the French, the Russians and the Americans. Cornel Wilde plays a Don from old Spanish nobility who is working to buy guns in order to push for joining the United States. An outlaw gang led by Alfonso Bedoya tries to rob him on the road. Bedoya works for the Brios brothers - Eugene Iglesias and John Dehner, who want to hand the territory over to Russian Princess Lisa Ferraday. To outfit the coming Russian soldiers, Bedoya robs and kills the local gunsmith, Hank Patterson. When Patterson's daughter, Teresa Wright, overhears Wilde's plan to infiltrate Bedoya's gang, she insists on coming along. It all climaxes at Dehner's ranch, with a victory for American freedom lovers over the Russians. For a story set in 1840, Robert E. Kent's screenplay does a lot of Cold War flag waving. While the script throws in a couple of lines about the need for powder for the rifles and pistols, director Lew Landers is quite content to stage his film with the usual weapons and settings you'd see in a Western set in the 1870s - except for the puffy shirt that Wilde wears which makes him look like he's crossed over from a swashbuckler - especially when he whips out a sword. If you've been dying to see Teresa Wright in pants shooting a six gun, this is the movie for you.

DEATH CURSE OF TARTU (1966) - Evil Everglades witch doctor Tartu just wanted to be left alone in death, so he placed a curse on anyone invading his burial ground. But did that keep archaeologists from tempting fate? Of course not, so he turns into a python, a shark, a water moccasin, an alligator and even his former living self to kill invaders. Rumor has it that he also turned into a tiger, but there are no tigers in Florida. There aren't any pythons native to the area either, but if that's what bothering you about this movie, then I think your cinematic priorities are out of wack. Writer/director William Grefe proves that writer/director Edward D. Wood Jr. is not the worst director in cinema history, but Grefe's cameraman Julio C. Chavez did get some good color on his exterior shots. Tartu is finally defeated by being kicked into quicksand. Only nature could kill him.

THE FROZEN GHOST (1945) - The fourth of the six Inner Sanctum mystery films from Universal Pictures starring Lon Chaney, aka Lon Chaney, Jr. This time Chaney is a radio hypnotist. When he puts Evelyn Ankers in a trance, she can read the minds of audience members. When drunken Arthur Hohl heckles him, Chaney invites the man on stage to be hypnotized. Hohl is so belligerent that when Chaney fixes his eyes on him, he wishes Hohl dead. Hohl dies, and Chaney thinks of himself as a murderer, even though Inspector Doublass Dumbrille tells him that the autopsy shows that the death was natural. Wax museum owner Tala Birell is happy when a depressed Chaney decides to leave everything behind, including Ankers. She gives him sanctuary in her museum, where disgraced plastic surgeon Martin Kosleck makes the life-like figures. Kosleck isn't happy about Chaney being around because Birell's neice, Elena Verdugo, is more interested in Chaney than in him. Ankers shows up to see Chaney, but Birell warns her away. Kosleck tells Birell that Chaney has been "making love" to Verdugo, which leads to a fight which drives Chaney away. Dumbrille assembles the cast back at the museum when Birell disappears. Without a body, Dumbrille can't accuse anyone of murder, but he is convinced someone killed Birell. When Verdugo finds that Kosleck is using Birell's body as part of a Shakespeare exhibit, we discover that Kosleck likes to throw knives, but has bad aim. Verdugo believes that Chaney is in on the crime as well, and runs away to become a captive of the villain. Kosleck exhibits his poor knife throwing ability against Chaney as our hero searches for Verdugo. It is finally revealed that Chaney's business manager, Milburn Stone, is in league with Kosleck to drive Chaney insane. When it turns out that the drug Kosleck used on Birell to put her in a state of frozen animation has actually killed her, Stone demands that they must get rid of both Birell and Verdugo. Luckily, Chaney, Ankers and Dumbrille arrive before Verdugo is killed, but the resolution to the mystery doesn't make sense. If Ankers is hypnotized in order to read other's thoughts, how can she see past events from an objective perspective? Harold Young directs without distinction.

I SHOT JESSE JAMES (1949) - Homer Croy wrote a number of articles for The American Weekly about Jesse James, so when writer Samuel Fuller decided to direct his first film, he turned to Croy for inspiration. Knowing that Bob Ford killed Jesse James and then was killed by Edward O'Kelley, Fuller created a fictional girlfriend for Ford to be played by Barbara Britton. For love of the girlfriend, Ford - played by John Ireland, killed James for amnesty in order to marry. However, the murder turns the girlfriend against Ford, and then Preston Foster, as John (!) Kelley, becomes part of a romantic triangle. When Frank James, played by former Captain Marvel Tom Tyler, shows up for revenge, Kelley becomes a marshal and arrests James. At this point, any resemblance to history is ignored. Now we just have to wait for the bullshit justification for Foster to kill Ireland. Reed Hadley is perhaps the thinnest Jesse James in cinema history. Dancer Jeni Le Gon has the rather thankless role of Britton's maid. The "Jesse James" folk song is used as the main musical theme throughout the movie, and it humiliates Ireland at least twice. It is used better in THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD, when Ford corrects the singer that Jesse had two children, not three. And that movie correctly shows that Ford was murdered by O'Kelley for no good reason.

KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE (2014) - Matthew Vaughn claims authorship credit on this movie based on the comic book The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, so I'll blame him. I'll blame Henry Jackman and Matthew Margeson for the music that seemed to really want to copy the music for Marvel's THE AVENGERS. Perhaps its a British sensibility, but I really wanted the tone that Barry Sonnenfeld gave MEN IN BLACK. But I enjoyed the exploding heads synchronized to Sir. Edward Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance". How can you hate a movie in which a Princess offers anal sex to our hero if he saves the world? It was good to see Samantha Womack of "Strange" again.

KINGSMAN: GOLDEN CIRCLE (2017) - As irritating as I found this movie, it did have a number of things that I enjoyed. I enjoyed that the Princess from the first film was now our hero's girlfriend and I liked the fact that he called her to ask permission to have sex with another woman while on a mission. It was also a novel idea that the tracking device was put in the villain's girlfriend by sexual fingering. I also enjoyed that Matthew Vaughn's much publicized love of the James Bond movies did not extend to the ending of ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE - which the assault on the lab in the Italian Alps brought to mind. As a non fan of John Denver, a lot of the musical bits were irritating, but I enjoyed a lot of what Elton John was given to do - even the variation on the anal sex gag from the first film. I also enjoyed the change-up to the union jack parachute gag from THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. It was always a pleasure to see Julianne Moore.

MILLION DOLLAR ARM (2014) - This is not a movie designed to appeal to me. A feel good movie about a sports agent who discovers two potential baseball pitchers in India by holding a contest involving cricket players may have a basis in truth, but the screenplay credited to Tom McCarthy is pretty much "by the numbers". Jon Hamm plays the agent, Bill Paxton plays the pitching coach and Alan Arkin plays a major league scout. Casting Lake Bell as the love interest is the most interesting element of the production. Four years after this movie came out, one of the pitchers, Rinku Singh, left baseball and became a WWE wrestler known as Veer. The other pitcher only worked for the Pittsburg Pirates organization from 2008 until 2010. Returning to India, he taught baseball. Director Craig Gillespie later made I, TONYA and CRUELLA.

THE PACK (1977) - Post JAWS (1974) but pre CUJO (1981), David Fisher's 1976 novel is set on an island used in the summer by vacationers who turn loose their dogs to live wild on the island after the summer is over. Unfortunately, it is now winter and the abandoned dogs form a pack to feed on the people and livestock who live on the island year round. Four years (and four movies) after ENTER THE DRAGON, writer/director Robert Clouse got the job to turn this book into a movie and luckily he hired Joe Don Baker as the hero so you know everything will work out okay. The movie is pretty predictable, with the introduction of the menace, our hero discovering the menace, a few supporting characters getting killed and then finally the plan to kill the menace. Unlike JAWS and CUJO, there is one unkilled dog that our hero is able to make friends with for an happy ending. Fans of Richard B. Shull, R.G. Armstrong and Bibi Besch may enjoy their roles in this movie.

SKYLINE (2010) - An extraterrestrial invasion movie set mostly inside an high rise Los Angeles penthouse condominium sounds like a solid low-budget flick, but the Brothers Strause deliver something with a lot of complicated CGI effects for about the cost of a Woody Allen movie. That's impressive, but they aren't able to solve the problem of repetition which creeps into the screenplay credited to Joshua Cordes and Liam O'Donnell. Ultimately, the movie makers want their film to be an emotional experience about a couple, Eric Balfour and Scottie Thompson, who are uncertain about their future now that she's become pregnant. At first it seems that the moviemakers will go for a MIRACLE MILE or CLOVERFIELD ending, but then comes the surprise that when the aliens infuse Balfour's brain and spinal column into one of their alien bodies, he stands to defend Thompson against whatever the aliens have in mind. Shot mostly in Greg Strause's condo, the film benefits from the directors expertise with visual effects as they had just made ALIEN VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM as their feature film debut. While in production on SKYLINE, the Brothers Strause were also doing effects for BATTLE: LOS ANGELES, but Sony Pictures dropped their lawsuit when SKYLINE came out and no elements from BATTLE were present. While SKYLINE got bad reviews, it was a box office success, so the Strauses made two sequels: BEYOND SKYLINE and SKYLINES. Also in the cast of actors mainly known for TV work is Donald Faison, David Zayas, Brittany Daniel and Crystal Reed.

BEYOND SKYLINE (2017) - While none of the original film's cast return, we do get a resolution to the character trapped in an alien body and his pregnant girlfriend. The new film starts with Detective Frank Grillo riding the subway in Los Angeles with his delinquent son Jonny Weston when the extraterrestrial attack comes. After a lot of evading, our heroes are swept up into the alien spaceship. It is there that Grillo is saved by a friendly guy in an alien body and the detective delivers the baby of the woman being protected. The friendly alien blows up the spaceship and it crashes in the "Golden Triangle" in Laos. Grillo, the rapidly aging baby and the subway driver Bojana Novakovic eventually hook up with illegal drug runners Pamelyn Chee and Iko Uwais to hide in a drug lair underneath some ancient ruins. It becomes apparent that there is only one extraterrestrial in the spaceship. Everyone else are slaves created with the brains and spines of humans. The drug gang's chemist determines something odd in the blood of the baby - now little girl, which Grillo becomes convinced can destroy the alien control of the slaves. When under the alien control, their eyes glow blue. When not in control, the eyes glow red. The alien army attacks and match the drug gangsters ability in martial arts. Eventually, Grillo injects the girl's blood into a control pod freeing the slaves and the attack ends in an human victory. Novakovic and Grillo name the girl Rose, and the film ends with Lindsey Morgan, as Cpt. Rose, leading an attack on the extraterrestrial space craft hiding behind the Moon. Obviously, a third film will come. The Brothers Strause hand over control of the "franchise" to writer Liam O'Donnell, who expands the geography of the story, but still isn't able to create characters and dialogue to hold interest between the action set pieces. Fans of THE RAID may enjoy seeing Iko Uwais in action again, but no one offers an explanation for the alien slaves knowing kick boxing techniques.

STREET OF SINNERS (1957) - One of the many stories credited to Philip Yordan during the time of the anti-Communist blacklist, STREET OF SINNERS is another tale of juvenile delinquency taking place on an inner city street where there is only one non-white to be seen. Fresh out of the academy, George Montgomery takes over the beat of a retiring cop who found it best to let local crook Nehemiah Persoff get away with flaunting the law. Montgomery won't stand for any of it - parking near a fire hydrant, serving alcohol to minors and directing thugs to commit vandalism. A teenage boy hangs himself, and the only clue is a fancy tie. Eventually, its turns out that the fancy tie was given to him by an old girlfriend whom Persoff turned out as a prostitute. When the prostitute's roommate tells Montgomery that she'll testify against Persoff, the villain pays a thug to murder her. At first the neighborhood and the police department turn against Montgomery when the body can't be found, but our hero finally figures out that the body was dumped down a hole leading to the sea. Persoff shows up to shoot Montgomery, but the retired cop shows up at the end to kill Persoff instead. John McPartland is credited with stringing together the cliches which made up a script for William Berke to produce and direct. Berke is credited with directing three more films before he died at the age of 54 in 1958. John McPartland wrote the novel THE KINGDOM OF JOHNNY COOL, before he died at the age of 47 in 1958. The film seems to endorse spanking as a cure for juvenile delinquency. Under the name Sandra Rehn, this was the film debut of Andra Martin who only continued her career for about five more years.

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David Deal enjoyed:

CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS (72)

BEHIND THE MASK (32)

HERO (02)

THE MYSTERIOUS MAGICIAN (64)

THE FALCON OUT WEST (44)

WALK HARD (07)

SLEEPERS WEST (41)

Mildly enjoyed:

THE GREEN HORNET (74)

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Charles Gilbert watched:

FROZEN GHOST (1945) Inner Sanctum entry with Lon Chaney, Jr. as a hypnotist who feels remorse for the death of one of his subjects during a performance. He's paired again with Evelyn Ankers and against nemeses Milburn Stone and Martin Kosleck.

DEGUEYO (1966) Giancomo Rossi (Jack) Stuart gets star billing in this western conflict once again about a stash of money. Ruthless bandit Ramon (Dan Vadis) and his Mexican gang terrorize a small village promising deguello (merciless destruction) if his avaricious demands are not met. Guiseppe Addobatti, Erika Blanc, Jose Torres, Daniele Vargas, and little Loris Loddi are targeted.

BREAKDOWN (1997) Massachusetts yuppies Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlin are headed to San Diego, as new employment summons them, when they become victims in the Arizonan desert of a sinister plot by trucker J. T. Walsh and gang for theft. When their new car goes kaput in the broad of day, said 18 wheeler stops to offer a ride to a phone nearby. Naiively the wife goes and leaves husband with the broken down 4 wheeler. He discovers a simple fix and heads out to retrieve her, to no avail. The big rig shows up again with the driver denying the previous encounter in the presence of a police officer (Rex Lin). Russell is chased by other gun toting gang members and is captured for an arm twisting to withdraw on his substantial bank account to their benefit. Pulling a fast one on them he manages to stow away on the trailer of the Peterbilt 377 headed to the home of the trucker where the abducted wife is being held prisoner. Another chase ensues leading to a finale at a bridge where the ramming and subsequently  dangling semi is venue for showdown. Rife with vile language throughout the film.

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Bertrand van Wonterghem highly enjoyed:

Diablero – season 1 (2018) – episode 2

Ogon batto / The golden bat (1966, Hajime Sato)

The Bee Gees : how can you mend a broken heart (doc) (2000, Frank Marshall)

Enjoyed:

My mother the car (1965) episode 3

The China syndrome (1978, James Bridges)

Maeumui sori : reboot / The sound of your heart : reboot – season 1 – episodes 7 to 9

City hunter / Nicky Larson  (anime) – season 1 – episodes 4 & 5

Il pianeta degli uomini spenti (1961, Antonio Margheriti)

Mildly enjoyed:

Fort Yuma (1956, Lesley Selander)

Dune (1984, David Lynch)

Did not enjoy:

Coplan sauve sa peau (1967, Yves Boisset)

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Angel Rivera wrote: 

Lately I have been into watching some animated films. I enjoyed "Dumbo", but wondered if it would still be shown today, because of the depiction of the crows and what they seem to represent. I also enjoyed "Bambi", "The Great Mouse Detective" and the music of  and the way Dickens' characters were adapted in "Oliver and Company."

 I also bought and watched the blue ray of  "Justice Society: World War II"!

Having grown up in the sixties (also known as the silver age of comics) some of my favorite comic books featured the return of the golden age "Justice Society of America." While I agree with some of the reviews (Spoiler Alert) that had the JSA fighting another super hero instead of Nazis, it was still fun for me to see some of these heroes in animated action, especially since the animation was so influenced by the Fleischer "Superman" cartoons of the 1940s. All in all I still found the animated film enjoyable and a worthy addition to my collection.

I also caught an interesting series from CNN titled "The Story of Late Night" which was about the history of the Tonight Show and other late night TV talk show hosts.

My girl and  I caught the "Friends" reunion special on HBO MAX and enjoyed the reminisces, especially because my lady is a big fan of the show and we have been binge watching the episodes which we watched when they first aired and find  they are still pretty funny.

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