From Mill Creek comes the complete collection of the Steve McQueen star making television series “Wanted: Dead or Alive.” Easily one of my favorite Western action series of all time, Steve McQueen plays the complex and often swift anti-hero and bounty hunter Josh Randall. Brandishing his trademark sawed off shotgun named “The Mare’s Leg,” Randall travels across the country capturing his latest bounties and being forced to often travel alongside them.
Director Barry Levinson’s 1996 “Sleepers” is a rich and compelling movie that straddles many genres from the coming of age, to courtroom, to the thriller, to revenge. “Sleepers” is a movie for anyone with a taste for cinema that explore childhood innocence and the end of it at the hands of pure evil. Director Levinson’s film tells the story of young boys in the 1960’s slums of Hell’s Kitchen in Queens. Bonded due to their religious loyalties and their relationship with patriarchal Father Bobby (DeNiro in one of the last great roles of his career), they often find themselves constantly walking the line between saintly and pure criminal.
Director Richard Linklater explores the rarely touched upon trope of the romance. What happens after “They lived happily ever after”? When the dust has settled and Jessie and Celine have built a life together, what happens when reality interferes in the romantic fantasy. Surely for two films, Jessie and Celine had a wonderful whirlwind romance, then an amazing reunion, but will Jessie’s love for his child and his obligations ultimately destroy the true love he yearned for years?
Much as I enjoy a movie about the apocalypse, the one disadvantage that D. Erik Parks’ short film has it that it needs much more exposition behind it. I loved the notion of doing whatever one can to survive, but I was never sure what to make of the premise for “Thieves,” in the end.
According to the epilogue of the film “Shame,” 53 percent of all domestic violence cases were reported by men. And yet we’re still living in a society where domestic abuse on males in intimate relationships are not only shrugged off, but aren’t even considered actual crimes by most people. Though society has built this idea that almost all domestic violence cases have been on women and children, men are often the abused that have to suffer through physical and mental abuse from their spouses.
In its own way director John Badham’s 1977 masterpiece “Saturday Night Fever” is dated in every imaginable way, but it’s because of that, that it’s a classic, and is very appreciated. And it’s also the swan song of a music fad that couldn’t have lasted. John Travolta really was a dynamo back in the days of his early career, with a trifecta of frenetic films like “Grease” which would come only a year later, and “Urban Cowboy” which made a real impact as a one of a kind film. What “Saturday Night Fever” is about, in its truest sense, is growing up. Get past the dated styles, and hair, and lingo and look deep down in to its narrative and you’ll find a truly excellent story about growing up and moving on leaving your childish things behind and starting a new life.
It’s amazing how James Wan once went from the man who brought us movies about a maniac torturing people to one of the most horrifying ghost tales ever brought to the big screen. “The Conjuring” lives up to its hype as a slow boil and immensely scary supernatural tale about an average family terrorized by a vicious demonic entity that’s intent on ruining their foundation from the inside out.