Movie News and Reviews

Don’t get too worked up, because it doesn’t involve a birth/marriage/raise/Grammy nomination, but awesome news all the same! Thirty plus years ago my Grandpa and I sat down and watched a wicked action flick called “Dark of the Sun” starring Rod Taylor. Once Grandpa passed, I spent twenty plus years trying to track down the title of the movie, then found it wasn’t on DVD and was out of print on tape. I found a VHS copy in the library system, only to rent it and find out the video was damaged and unwatchable. End of story. Until . . . last night at work a supervisor hands me a copy of Entertainment Weekly and on page 59 is an unmistakable picture from the film – Taylor fighting a chainsaw wielding opponent! The remastered film (which counts Quentin Tarantino as a fan) is now available on DVD solely through Warner Archive on its direct order website warnerarchive.com.  You can bet that after the holidays I’ll be buying a copy of this, and hopefully watching it with my Smiley (if it isn’t as violent as I remember;  Grandpa had rather poor judgment on what was age-appropriate to watch)

Also out on DVD – Doctor Detroit, a cheesy Dan Aykroyd comedy about a college professor who moonlights as a pimp with a metal hand. I loved this as a kid (again, it wasn’t age appropriate). What I remember most is a scene where Aykroyd turns down the services of a drunk, down on his luck lawyer.  The scene tore me apart, and I cried and told my Grandparent’s that I wish we could go buy the lawyer some groceries, because he looked like he needed someone’s help. What can I say – I was a sappy, Smiley-like kid.

Men in Black 3 was pretty darn good. The plot is pretty simple, but unique enough to justify returning to what I’d consider a dead in the water franchise. Agent J travels back in time to 1969 to stop another time-traveler from killing Agent K and triggering an interstellar invasion. Kudos to Josh Brolin on a masterful job channeling Tommy Lee Jones, and while I saw the “emotional” plot point at the end from a mile away, the film as a whole was entertaining and great popcorn viewing. Grade: B+

What are the the best magazines in the world? I can’t answer that, by can tell you which ones are my favorites: Smithsonian, Entertainment Weekly, Archeology, and (a distant fourth) Biblical Archeology.