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Review: Bite the Bullet

Set in the early 1900s, the film concerns a cross-Colorado endurance horse race with an array of cowboys and one cowgirl (Candice Bergen) competing for a cash prize. The late, great Gene Hackman is an equine lover charged with delivering a champion horse to one of the riders, but ends up signing up for the race alongside fellow former Rough Rider James Coburn. Ben Johnson, Irish actor Ian Bannen, Jan-Michael Vincent, and Candice Bergen essentially play ‘The Old Timer’, ‘The Englishman’, ‘The Kid’, and ‘The Woman’, also competitors in the race.   A seemingly engaging premise is given surprisingly slow and uninvolving treatment from writer-director Richard Brooks ( “Elmer Gantry” , “In Cold Blood” , “The Professionals” , all classics in my book). This cross-country horse-riding western from 1975 features strong work by a perfectly cast Gene Hackman, a rousing music score by Alex North ( “Spartacus” , my favourite film “The Misfits” ), and nice scenery. However, it’s...
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Review: The Psychopath

  A member (John Harvey) of a chamber music quartet is the latest victim in a series of murders where the calling card is a doll left at the scene of each crime replicating the victim. Inspector Patrick Wymark enters to investigate, the prime suspects are a doll-collecting, wheelchair-bound old woman (played by Margaret Johnston) and her pale son (John Standing). Judy Huxtable is a daughter of one of the victims, with Don Borisenko playing her American boyfriend, a medical student also considered a suspect. The other three string quartet members are played by Alexander Knox, Robert Crewdson, and a sniffly Thorley Walters.   Director Freddie Francis ( “Hysteria” , “Tales From the Crypt” ), writer Robert Bloch ( “Asylum” , “Psycho” , “The Skull” ), and Amicus studios offer up a fun 1966 mystery psycho-thriller that could’ve been really great if not for a lack of credible red herrings. Through no fault of the cast, it won’t take you long to figure out who the title killer...
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Review: Confess, Fletch

  Jon Hamm plays the title smart arse, a former investigative journalist who gets caught up in a case involving kidnap as well as the theft of a Picasso. Lorenza Izzo plays the daughter of a Count (Robert Picardo of all people), with Marcia Gay Harden playing her stepmother. John Slattery is Fletch’s former editor, and Kyle MacLachlan plays a germaphobe art dealer.   With all due respect to the original stories by Gregory McDonald, if you’re gonna do a  “Fletch”  movie, you’re gonna be compared to the Michael Ritchie/Chevy Chase vehicles because those are more well-known. In other words, you better be damn funny if you don’t want to end up looking like a damn  fool . I love the 1985  “Fletch” , and whilst Jon Hamm isn’t miscast as the title smart-arse detective (Jason Sudeikis would’ve been even better), this 2022 film from director Greg Mottola (the genuinely funny  “Superbad ”) and co-writer Zev Borow (a story editor on TV’s  “Chuck” ) just ...
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Review: J.D.’s Revenge

  Law student (and cab driver!) Glynn Turman attends a hypnotist show with his lady (Joan Pringle) and friends, and somehow ends up possessed by the spirit of nasty gangster J.D. Walker (David McKnight) who was murdered in the early 1940s. All of a sudden Turman turns into a violent thug, whilst tracking down the man who betrayed him. That leads him to the Reverend Elija Bliss (Lou Gossett Jr.), a former gangster turned shonky religious show-pony.   One of the more underrated blaxploitation films, this 1976 supernatural revenge story from director-producer Arthur Marks ( “Friday Foster” , “Bucktown” , “The Monkey Hustle” ) is a strange but compelling mix of silly and scary. Scripted by Jaison Starkes (who wrote this, an episode of “MacGyver” and basically nothing else), I think the explanation for the supernatural events is lacking and Lou Gossett seems a good 10-15 years too young for his role, but otherwise this is weird as hell and I liked it. It’s even a l...
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Review: Freud

Depicting the early stages in the career of Dr. Sigmund Freud (Montgomery Clift), whose progressive ideas for treating the mentally ill earn the ire of his stuffy colleagues. This is especially the case with Freud’s mentor Dr. Meynert (Eric Portman) who believes the patients are merely faking illnesses for attention. Susannah York and David McCallum play disturbed patients whose neuroses will result in the formation of Freud’s Oedipus-complex theory (with Freud having daddy issues himself that haunt him as well). Larry Parks plays Freud’s friend and professional colleague, Rosalie Crutchley plays Freud’s mother, Susan Kohner is Freud’s wife, Allan Cuthbertson plays another professional colleague, whilst director John Huston narrates the film.   The frustratingly uneven penultimate film in the career of Montgomery Clift sees him unhelpfully cast as a supposedly neurotic Sigmund Freud. This 1962 biopic from director John Huston (director of my favourite film “The Misfits” a year...
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Review: Top Gun: Maverick

Tom Cruise returns to the role of Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, a Navy test pilot and captain who is transferred to the Navy’s fighter pilot training program (AKA ‘Top Gun’) to prepare a group of young best and brightest for a dangerous mission. He’s recommended for the gig by old sparring partner and now Admiral Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazinsky (Val Kilmer). A snag comes in the form of one of the young pilots, Lt. Bradshaw (Miles Teller) who just so happens to be the son of Maverick’s old pilot buddy ‘Goose’, who of course died in the first film. Bradshaw is bitterly opposed to being instructed by Maverick. Meanwhile, Maverick reignites an old flame in local bar owner Penny (Jennifer Connelly), whom he didn’t end on the best of terms with a long time ago. Jon Hamm and Ed Harris play disapproving senior officers, whilst Glen Powell and Monica Barbaro are a couple of cocky pilots.   I suppose I understood the immediate superficial appeal of the first “Top Gun” , but I’ve never understood its e...
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Review: Train to Busan

Seoul fund manager and ne’er-do-well father Yoo Gong is taking daughter Kim Soo-an on the train to visit mum in Busan. Not the best time for it. After a clearly ill woman on board the train attacks a train attendant, it sets off a chain reaction of people on board being turned into horrible, raging zombies. Kim Eui-sung plays the requisite selfish a-hole on board whose level of self-preservation cowardice is truly jaw-dropping.   The only zombie movie that has ever really gotten me emotional, this 2016 film from South Korean writer-director Yeon Sang-ho (his live-action directorial debut) is also one of the few times in a zombie movie where I’ve been upset with a particular character being bitten. And it happens several more times throughout the film. This film doesn’t spare you, and I totally understand the hype on this one. It’s terrific.   The zombies look great, the human behaviour is relatively plausible, the scenes of chaos and destruction are excellent, and at t...
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Review: Dark Mission: Evil Flowers

CIA boss Sparks (spaghetti western and low-budget ninja movie veteran Richard Harrison) sends agent Derek Carpenter (Christopher Mitchum) to South America to bring down a local drug baron (Christopher Lee). Cristina Higueras plays Lee’s daughter. Brigitte Lahaie is Carpenter’s local contact who as a score to settle with him.   The bad boy of sleazy Euro cinema Jesus Franco ( “Vampyros Lesbos” , “Eugenie de Sade” ) went PG-13 with this obscure 1988 action movie of sorts. It’s this awkward thing where the only people who will even have an inclination to check this out are Franco fans, but a lot of those Francophiles won’t like it for how mild it is. This isn’t an exploitation or horror film, it’s a low-budget action film with actually not a whole lot of action in it until the finale. If anything the film probably would’ve benefitted from the usual Franco touches of zoom-happy camerawork, and large helpings of sex and violence. Here it feels as if Franco were a mere director-for-h...
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