March 2021

King Kong

  • Title: King Kong (1976)
  • IMDb: link

King Kong DVD review1976’s King Kong holds up fairly well nearly 45 years after its release. The first remake of the 1933 film, producer Dino De Laurentiis and director John Guillermin‘s film is memorable for its practical effects including the mechanical Kong mask developed by Carlo Rambaldi and Rick Baker giving Kong’s face a wide range of emotion. While some of the composite shots merging Kong with the world aren’t as effective today, there’s still quite a bit of movie magic. Baker also credits cinematographer Richard H. Kline whose work he felt hid the limitations of what could be done with Kong at the time.

Updating the story a bit to fit with the times, the ship isn’t searching for exotic locations but instead that of an oil company executive (Charles Grodin) looking to drill. Stowing away is paleontologist Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges) who has his own reasons for wanting to visit the island. The ship also picks up the sole survivor of a shipwreck, aspiring actress Dwan (Jessica Lange), who completes a cast supplemented by the ship’s crew and the natives they will encounter on the island.

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The Falcon and the Winter Soldier – The Star Spangled Man

  • Title: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier – The Star Spangled Man
  • wiki: link

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier - The Star Spangled Man television review

After The Falcon and the Winter Soldier kept them apart for the entire opening episode, “The Star Spangled Man” throws Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) together so quickly you almost wonder if you missed an episode in-between. Finally playing to the strengths of the odd couple pairing, and offering a more consistent narrative that doesn’t ping pong around nearly as much as the show’s opener, the second episode gives us a team-up not just between Bucky and Sam but, unexpectedly, working alongside the new Captain America (Wyatt Russell) and his sidekick (Clé Bennett) who discover the gang of Flag Smashers they’ve all been chasing (well, except for Bucky who just tags along to bug Sam) turn out to be super-soldiers.

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