Even after “Superman: The Movie” and its somewhat successful franchise, the idea of turning comic books in to movies or a TV show was a rare prospect. Studios considered it a gamble as then comic books were considered a kids medium, so it was an anomaly for something like the Incredible Hulk to be adapted in to a successful drama that stayed in syndication for a long time. Six years after the end of the series, Bill Bixby returns to the role of David Banner, a scientist now living in a seaside town with his girlfriend. He’s mostly lived a quiet life and is helping to create a machine that can decay gamma radiation. Though he’s helping the local lab to create it, he’s also hoping to use it as a means of killing the hulk and end his curse.
Tag Archives: Romance
The Wanderers (1979) [Blu-Ray]
After spending many years in a hard to find DVD version, “The Wanderers” is finally given the proper treatment on blu-ray by Kino Lorber with a beautiful 2K restoration. “The Wanderers” is one of the many films from the nostalgia boom of the late seventies and early eighties, that peeks back in to the sixties, where great change was taking shape, and the world was at war. With films like “American Graffiti” making waves, “The Wanderers” is another of those defining era dramas that is shockingly overlooked and not often appreciated. “The Wanderers” is very much a gangland picture but more so a coming of age drama about a young boy growing up in a world filled with allegiances, dividing loyalties, and uneasy questions about where he stands in a gradually shifting society.
Check Please (2017)
The premise for “Check Please” is less a slice of life and more something you’d find in a normal sitcom. That’s not a slight, but it does hinder what is a fine comedy, that could have been great. “Check Please” involves a massive misunderstanding that snowballs in to chaos, as young Ben is preparing to propose to Laura, his girlfriend of many years. She seems like a girl who has put up with a lot and has spent a while trying to convince Ben to marry her, and he’s opted to propose by sneaking her ring in to a piece of pie.
The Ottoman Lieutenant (2016)
Following a lecture by a handsome missionary doctor, a frustrated young American nurse decides to go to Turkey to deliver much needed supplies and her late brother’s truck. As war looms and dangers abound, she is assigned an Ottoman Lieutenant to protect her on her journey to the faraway hospital. During their journey, friendship blooms and once at the hospital, romance is in the air.
45 Years (2015): The Criterion Collection [Blu-Ray]
It’s stunning how subtle and delicate “45 Years” introduces itself, only to end on such a heavy and gut wrenching final scene that leaves you with the weight of questions and uneasy answers. From beginning to end, director Andrew Haigh confronts many of life’s very difficult problems, including how easy it is for a relationship approaching a century, can be dismantled in only a week. Haigh almost seems to count down to the final day where couple Kate and Geoff celebrates their four and a half decades together as a married couple. Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling are stellar as a seemingly mundane husband and wife whose life is changed one day with a letter that arrives for Geoff.
Beauty And The Beast (2014) [Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital]
Christophe Gans offers up a richly realized and absolutely beautiful vision of “Beauty and the Beast” that embraces the dark side and fantasy of the original story. While yes, Belle begins to fall In love with the Beast, and is even enticed by him, it’s also thanks his aggression and insistence on influencing her Stockholm syndrome. Belle does eventually find the beauty of living with the beast, in that she’s able to roam his massive castle and is capable of finding secrets and fun corners within it. She even plays hide and seek with dog like creatures that find a fascination with Belle. Gans’ direction is superb and absolutely mesmerizing, I can not stress that enough. Many of his wide shots, and pans are magnificent and he knows how to make the beast both enigmatic and terrifying. There’s even a marvelous moment where the Beast is looking out on to an invading army from his perch, resembling Lon Chaney from “Phantom of the Opera.”
Mighty Joe Young (1949)
1949’s “Mighty Joe Young” is almost a parallel universe retelling of “King Kong” except with half the menace and a lot more innocence. Rather than an overgrown ape being exposed to the cruelty of humanity dying for a woman, we’re given an equally touching tale of an overgrown ape and his loyal female caretaker. With beautiful and often fluid stop motion by Ray Harryhausen, “Mighty Joe Young” tells the story of a girl named Jill Young who decides to buy a baby ape from a pair of traders. Anxious to prove to her father she can manage a pet, years later her pet Joe transforms in to a fiercely protective overgrown ape who isn’t very kind of poachers and hunters. When hunters Max and Gregg go to Africa to catch animals to use for their show, Joe Young appears attempting to break the animals free and begins fighting off the intruders.