TITLE: HUDSON HAWK
DATE: 1991
GENRE: Action Comedy
RUNNING TIME: Approx. 100 min
RATING: R
FORMAT: DVD
SCRIPT:(story) Bruce Willis & Robert Kraft ; (screenplay) Steven E. de Souza and Daniel Waters
DIRECTOR: Michael Lehmann
STARRING: Bruce Willis; Danny Aiello; Andie MacDowell; James Coburn; Sandra Bernhard; Don Harvey; David Caruso; Frank Stallone

 I remember this movie from long ago. The title I mean. That's about it. That and the song "Swinging on a Star". And the dreams of Sandra Bernharts lips chasing me down a hallway for years. Every now again its fun to dig up a classic film and watch it again for the first time. Hudson Hawk was this weapon of choice for a this one rainy night. From the very beginning with a cold opening of sorts, I had forgotten references to Leonardo di Vinci as well as the fact that this film was woven with weird fun humor...

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TITLE:   The Jerk
DATE:   1979                                         
GENRE: Classic Cult Comedy
RUNNING TIME: 1hr 34 min
RATING: R
FORMAT: Dvd
SCRIPT: Steve Martin and Carl Gottleib
DIRECTOR: Carl Reiner
STARRING: Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, Catlin Adams, Mabel King,
 

"No matter what the times are, a strong comedy is always welcome."- Steve Martin

This was in some production notes on the DVD extras in 26th Anniversary Edition of Steve Martin and Carl Gottlieb's "The Jerk" directed by Carl Reiner... Read More

TITLE:  Crazed Fruit                                              
GENRE: Drama
DATE: 1956
RUNNING TIME: 86 min
RATING: Not Rated
FORMAT: DVD, VHS
SCRIPT: Shintarô Ishihara
DIRECTOR: Ko Nakahira
STARRING: Ayuko Fujitshiro, Taizo Fukami, Mie Kitahara

 

One of the earliest and best of Nikkatsu Studios' "Sea Tribe" films which form a sort of cultural corollary to the American teen angst films coming out at that same time.  Still, it's a little bit shocking to consider a film made just eleven years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be about essentially spoiled upper middle class teens who discuss and dismiss Marx in favor of trendy Western consumption, joke about adopting boredom as a manifesto.  They're punks who look like Mouseketeers...

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TITLE: Road House
GENRE: Drama
RUNNING TIME: 114 minutes
RATING: R
FORMAT: DVD
SCRIPT: David Lee Henry
DIRECTOR: Rowdy Herrington
STARRING: Patrick Swayze, Kelly Lynch, and Sam Elliot



I've been thinking about Road House.

See, I had a buddy over for Chinese take out one night and as we were eating I turned on the TV.  Wasn't much on so I threw it over to AMC to see what was on and to my surprise there was Road House.  (They have changed the definition of Classics on that station.)  Well, I hadn't seen it in awhile so I left it.  Turns out, he had never seen it and it was pretty early on, so we settled in. Long after the food was gone, there were were sitting in my kitchen watching Road House.  We were there til the last ass was kicked and the bear fell on the fat guy.  And all I could do is think to myself is "Why?". For you poor souls that haven't seen it, Road House is the story of a Philosophy major turned world's greatest bouncer who gets hired to clean up a skanky bar called the Double Deuce... Read More

TITLE:   Haxan                                             
GENRE: Horror
RUNNING TIME: 87 minutes
RATING: not rated
FORMAT: DVD
SCRIPT: Benjamin Christensen
DIRECTOR: Benjamin Christensen
STARRING: Benjamin Christensen, Elisabeth Christensen, Maren Pederson

In the mid-twenties a Swedish director named Victor Sjostrom , who directed in America as Victor Seastrom, convinced Louis B. Mayer to watch a print of the movie Haxan .  Impressed but slightly shaken, Mayer remarked that the director was either a genius or a madman.  Watching it today, you still find yourself asking the same question.
   Haxan was a Swedish film directed by a Dane, Benjamin Christensen, who stumbled across a copy of the book Malleus Maleficarum in a German bookstore while selling his first hit film the Mysterious X.  Malleus Maleficarum, published in the late 1400's, was the handbook for witch-hunters that sent forth proof that witches existed and gave instructions on how to conduct a witch trial...

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