Like many, I found Eddie and the Cruisers on HBO. After a bit of a fumbled theatrical release, low box office numbers, and mixed reviews from critics that caused the film to be pulled from theaters after only a couple of weeks, the movie found a home on cable in part to its terrific soundtrack going quadruple platinum, and, unlike the film, being a runaway success.
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Whether or not 1996’s The Arrival works for you or not will likely boil down to whether or not you can accept the premise of Charlie Sheen as a scientist who stumbles into, and becomes lost in, a vast conspiracy of aliens on Earth altering the planet for their own ends. It’s B-movie sci-fi to be sure, but it’s held up fairly well over the years even if the film struggles at times balancing the higher-minded scientific ideas with the rampant paranoia.
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With Christopher Nolan‘s big-budget of adaptation looming, we take a quite different look at a film exploring Homer‘s classic tale. Written and directed by French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard, 1963’s Contempt centers on playwright Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli), whose marriage falls apart after he agrees to help rework the script for American producer Jerry Prokosch (Jack Palance) and German director Fritz Lang‘s (playing an exaggerated version of himself) production of Homer’s The Odyssey.
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Arriving in theaters 17 years after Zorro, the Gay Blade, 1998’s The Mask of Zorro gave us Anthony Hopkins as the classic hero Don Diego de la Vega who we see imprisoned by the corrupt Spanish Governor Don Rafael Montero (Stuart Wilson) on Spain’s retreat from its former colony. With his wife (Julieta Rosen) killed, and his daughter Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) stolen to be raised by his mortal enemy, Diego remains imprisoned for 20 years when Montero’s return gives him a chance at vengeance and to instruct a new pupil (Antonio Banderas) in the ways of Zorro.
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Mu zhong wu ren, released to Western audiences as Eye for an Eye, Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman, and Defiant, stars Miao Xie as the blind bounty hunter. Learning his name only at the end of the film, Cheng Xiazi’s strict regimen is interrupted when he meets a wine maker (Weiman Gao) who is raped, and her family slaughtered, on her wedding day. Receiving no help from the local police, who are fearful of the attackers powerful criminal ties, our hero champions Ni Yan’s need for vengeance.
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