Blu-ray Review: Film Focus—Gene Hackman
In a career that spanned nearly sixty years and included two Oscars and four Golden Globe awards, Gene Hackman is consider one of the great actors of his era. He appeared in some of the biggest films of the 1960’s and ‘70s including Bonnie and Clyde, Downhill Racer, The French Connection and Prime Cut, just […]
Blu-ray Review: The Swarm
[amazon_link asins=’B07GSX4MPM’ template=’ProductAd’ store=’moviegazett03-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’932e584d-f2aa-11e8-bf9c-9fa89fc30cf5′]Producer/director Irwin Allen struck box office gold with a string of star-studded disaster films including The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). Based on a novel by Arthur Herzog, The Swarm, seemed liked a surefire hit given Allen’s track record and fear over armies of Africanized killer bees […]
Rollercoaster (1977) (Blu-ray)
Produced by Jennings Lang and written by the acclaimed team of Richard Levinson and William Link, Rollercoaster rumbled into movie theaters in the summer of 1977 with Sensurround. One of only four films to ever feature the then revolutionary technology—the others were Earthquake (1974), Midway (1977), and the theatrical version of Battlestar Galactica (1978)—special low […]
Broken Lance (Blu-ray)
Released in 1954, Broken Lance addressed the growing concern of “race relations” “race relations” from the standpoint of the Old American West. A reworking of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s House of Strangers (1949), the film addresses the issue of so-called ‘half breeds’—a person whose parents are of different races, often half white and half Native American. […]
Judgment at Nuremberg (Blu-ray)
Known for his so-called “message movies,” independent producer/director Stanley Kramer made a career of bringing attention to social issues that most major studios looked to avoid. Whether he was exploring racism, nuclear war, or politics, Kramer always tried to approach his subject matter with humility, humanity, and when appropriate, humor, always within the framework of […]
Blu-ray Review: Panic in the Streets
Panic in the Streets arrived rather early in director Elia Kazan’s career. When the film was released in 1950, Kazan was really just breaking free of the studio and theatrical constraints that he felt hampered much of his earlier work, yet hadn’t begun to delve into the adaptations of Tennessee Williams, John Steinbeck and others, […]
Blu-ray Review: Twilight’s Last Gleaming
Loosely adapted from novelist Walter Wager’s 1971 thriller, Viper Three, Twilight’s Last Gleaming sets up an improbable plot, but still manages to be an interesting film with clearly more in mind than being just a standard thriller. Directed by Robert Aldrich, a man who brought his liberal humanist thematic vision to many of his films, […]