Adventure

[7] Everyone in front of and behind the camera is back for another go-round in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, a fun time at the movies, even if it falls a tad short of the first film‘s humor and character engagement. This installment focuses around the sudden appearance and identification of Peter Quill’s (Chris Pratt) father, played by the always-welcome Kurt Russell. Dad reveals …

[4] Rogue One is the first of what is sure to be many stand-alone or spin-off Star Wars movies over the next few decades. This maiden venture focuses on the events leading directly into Episode IV: A New Hope, with a young woman trying to redeem her father’s coerced invention of the Death Star by leading a rag-tag team of freedom fighters into hostile Imperial …

[3] Remember the Robert Altman movie The Player? At the end of that movie, they mock the typical Hollywood movie by showing the end of a cheesy movie in which Julia Roberts is sentenced to death in the gas chamber, only to be rescued by Bruce Willis at the very last possible second. Bruce shoots his way into the gas chamber and carries Julia out in his …

[4] Based on a story by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Land That Time Forgot is about the crew of a German submarine and the survivors of a ship they torpedoed banding together on a mysterious island full of dinosaurs and cave people. The British production takes a long while to get to the island, so much so that it feels like an entirely different movie …

[3] James Marsden, Thomas Jane, and Piper Perabo star in this wannabe animal attack movie that’s really just an overwrought drama about estranged brothers burying the hatchet. The squabbling between the two men (all the men in the movie, actually) gets pretty tedious, and you have to be prepared to get some cheese sprayed on you as well — Perabo’s character is deaf, and she …

[7] Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland reteam after their initial pairing in Captain Blood. This time, they’re in a love triangle that plays out during an Indian massacre of British women and children, later spurring into action the contents of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s vengeful Charge. For a film from the ’30s, Charge has balls. You see women and children die on screen during some …

[5] Lex Barker takes over the loincloth from Johnny Weissmuller, who was simply getting too old and heavy to continue swinging on vines. Unfortunately, what Barker has in looks, he lacks in charisma. The story in this Lost Horizon-esque episode involves a woman (Evelyn Ankers) who crashed in the jungle thirty years ago and happened upon a tribe possessing a literal fountain of youth. When …

[6] A secret civilization is dying of a mysterious disease, so they start kidnapping women to repopulate! Lex Barker swings into action in his second outing as Tarzan, determined to rescue Jane (Vanessa Brown) and a lustful, headstrong nurse (Denise Darcel) from the kidnappers. Cheeta the Chimp’s antics are thankfully kept to a minimum (though he does get drunk in a scene) and Darcel’s performance …

[5] Lex Barker’s third outing in the loincloth has him caught up with gunrunners, warring tribes, and even a man-eating jungle plant. The script is more scatter-shot than usual, but Barker seems more comfortable in the role than before, playing Tarzan as less brutish and more talkative (though still a stranger to most pronouns and articles). Virginia Huston makes a terrible Jane — you don’t …

[5] Tarzan is tricked into guiding smugglers to a village of dangerous natives who guard a secret stash of diamonds in Tarzan’s Savage Fury. Lex Barker’s penultimate swing in the loincloth is the first to dabble with the Greystoke lineage and the second to feature Boy (Tommy Carlton), though this incarnation of Boy is not a blood relative to Tarzan or Jane (Dorothy Hart). I …

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