It was only a matter of time before a Hollywood company westernized the great Japanese film Seven Samurai. An instant classic when it made its debut in 1954, Akira Kurosawa’s masterwork came to America in late 1956, largely seen in […]
Continue reading »Month: November 2020
The Magnificent Seven (1960) ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Featuring a great cast and perhaps the greatest western movie score ever written (by Elmer Bernstein), The Magnificent Seven is a genuine American classic (based, of course, on the Japanese classic Seven Samurai). Like other films that attained classic status, […]
Continue reading »Return of the Seven (1966) ☆ ☆
It took six years for the Mirisch Company to formulate and produce a sequel to its original hit. During those six years the original film gradually found an audience, partly because its younger stars, as well as Yul Brynner, found […]
Continue reading »Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) ☆ ☆ 1/2
The third entry in this — unusual — western series is, essentially, a remake of the first one. Nine years after the original, three years after the second adventure, the Mirisch Company tried again. Set in Mexico again (but shot […]
Continue reading »The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972) ☆ ☆ 1/2
The fourth and final film in the original Mirisch Company series takes a very different slant to the familiar formula. Three years after his last south-of-the-border adventure, Chris Adams is faced with another one — but this time he turns […]
Continue reading »The Magnificent Seven series: Epilogue
So it turns out that even though Seven is the keynote number to each film, the key number to this series is one, one being Chris Adams. He is the only character to appear in more than two films, and […]
Continue reading »The Postcard Killings (2020) ☆ ☆ ☆
This hunt-for-a-serial-killer-on-the-loose-in-Europe reminded me at times of The Snowman, a terrible 2017 whodunit. Thankfully this film, based upon a book by James Patterson and Liza Marklund, and partially written by Miss Marklund, is a whole lot better and more compelling. […]
Continue reading »Honest Thief (2020) ☆ ☆ ☆
For a while there Liam Neeson seemed like the hardest working man in the movies, with dramas and action films all over the place. The pandemic has slowed everything down a bit, but here he is again, this time in […]
Continue reading »The Invisible Man (2020) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Universal has been trying recently, with little success, to update their classic horror movie franchises. Remember Dracula Untold (2014, with Luke Evans) or The Mummy (2017, with Tom Cruise)? I thought not. Here, the venerable studio updates James Whale’s 1933 […]
Continue reading »Let Him Go (2020) ☆ ☆ ☆
Here is a different example of violence, or the threat of violence, in film, and it is a far, far better film than the ridiculous mayhem of Birds of Prey, the most recent movie I reviewed. Suspense, excitement and anxiety […]
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