Category: Uncategorized
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“First Blood” 44 Years Later, The Man Who Didn’t Want a Fight.
In “First Blood,” “You picked one helluva guy to mess around with…” Responding to Rambo’s backstory, deputy Mitch (David Caruso) says “a Green Beret. …That’s great. That’s just great!“ Balford (Michael Talbott) says “Those green berets. They’re real badasses”. …With all the “violence,” there’s only one death. And it’s not intentional at Rambo’s hand.
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“The Accused” after 38 Years: When *Rape* Goes Unnamed
1988’s “The Accused,” is a powerful film starring Jodie Foster and Kelly McGillis, that dealt candidly with the offputting subject of gang rape. According to Imdb, it “is based on the March 6, 1983 experience of” 21-year-old Portuguese “Cheryl Araujo who survived a violent gang rape at Big Dan’s Tavern in New Bedford, Massachusetts…” The opening…
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1976’s “Marathon Man” 50 Years Later is Much More than “Is It Safe”?
The Holocaust-related thriller “Marathon Man” came out in general release on Oct. 8, 1976. The most memorable, notorious and best-publicized scene in it is the disturbing sadistic dental one with Lawrence Olivier as Nazi war criminal Christian Szell uses root canal as torture on graduate student Dustin Hoffman as Tom “Babe” Levy. The notion of…
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More than 25 Years after David Russell’s “Three Kings,” Another Look
David Russell’s 1999 “Three Kings” is a story of American soldiers in who’ve just ended or “won” a war against Saddam Hussein. The film portrays soldiers doing their jobs, the discombobulation of American foreign policy as soldiers might effect it, and the Big Army derailing the soldiers’ acts of human decency toward civilians after a…
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“The Last of the Mohicans,” from 1992, Remains a Rousing Adventure
Michael Mann’s 1992 “The Last of the Mohicans” came out on Sept 25th 1992. An historical epic, a proto-western story (well before the Old-West arose), and this is among the rare films where the Native or adopted Native characters, like Hawkeye (played by Daniel-Day Lewis), Chingachcook (played by Russell Means), are peers to the presumed…
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1987’s “Fatal Attraction” Remains a Yarn about a One-Night-Stand Thrown into Crazyness
As I spend any given week observing “vintage” films, 1987’s “Fatal Attraction” is the rare 1980s film, which, when the AI research tool told me it was released on Sept 18, I hadn’t already seen! I was too young! I don’t remember having seen the teasers or trailer for “Fatal Attraction”. At age 15, the…
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Without 1993’s “The Joy Luck Club,” Asian Cultures and Realities in Movies Would be Scant
Around Sept 8th or 10th of 1993, 33-years-ago, Wayne Wang made the film adaptation of Amy Tan’s beloved novel “The Joy Luck Club”. In U.S. cinema history Asian-Americans had been struggling for generations for others to see them beyond rigid stereotypes, which white people found most comforting. Tamlyn Tomita, one of the actors who played…
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Forty Years after Reiner’s “Stand by Me,” Ben King’s Hit Song Resonates
I’m sure I heard Ben King’s hit “Stand by Me” before I saw the film. Rob Reiner’s 1986 adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Body,” “Stand by Me” came out as summer ended around Sept. 5th. In the American lore of coming-of-age experienced, summer has persistently been a mile-marker of these experiences! According to TV shows…
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Hitchcock’s 1948 “Rope” Recounts Leopold & Loeb Murder, and Out-Dated Psych
I barely remember the movie “Rope”. The Alfred Hitchcock film with “no cuts” came out in 1948 well before my birth! August 28th marks an anniversary of the film’s release. As for the real “inspiration” for the film, and self-conscious exercise of snotty young men, 19-year-old Nathan Leopold and 18-year-old Richard Loeb’s, self-perceived brilliance and…
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In 1987 “Dirty Dancing” was Much More than Most of Us Thought!
As with many films the GenXers know, they wonder “how is “Dirty Dancing” nearly 40-years-old”? On August 21, “Dirty Dancing” was released in 1987. What any of us saw might be disparate from what or how we remember it more than 30 years later. The youngster dance and romance story aged in a peculiar way.…
