Tag: John Rhys-Davies

  • The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989, Bill Bixby)

    Spoiler: there’s no trial in Trial of the Incredible Hulk. Except maybe the viewer’s difficulty getting through the TV movie. Or producer, director, and star Bixby doing a special effects heavy (but not for Hulk Lou Ferrigno) backdoor pilot for a “Daredevil” TV show starring very special guest star Rex Smith. Ferrigno’s so shoe-horned into…

  • Valley of the Gods (2019, Lech Majewski)

    Valley of the Gods is a cautionary tale. If you’re going to make a combination of Citizen Kane—with either actual footage or a recreated shot—and then a bunch of vague Kubrick nods, including Keir Dullea (arguably in the film’s best performance) as a snippy butler and a HAL while doing a retelling of the Navajo…

  • Concrete Blondes (2012, Nicholas Kalikow)

    A more appropriate title for Concrete Blondes might be Bad Lesbian Hip Crime Thriller Written by Three Men. The sexuality of the protagonists sadly has a lot to do with it because writers Kalikow, Rob Warren Thomas and Chris Wyatt create a love triangle between Carly Pope and Samaire Armstrong and their Valley Girl roommate…

  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989, Steven Spielberg)

    Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade shows off Steven Spielberg’s comedic skills. Not just in his direction of the scenes between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery, but also in the film’s overall tone. At the beginning, as River Phoenix is running from the bad guys on the train, Spielberg homages Buster Keaton (and rather well).…

  • Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Steven Spielberg)

    Don Siegel had an anecdote about the length of titles. He showed them to his boss, who kept asking for them to be longer, then showed them to the boss again, telling him each time he’d made the changes. In fact, he had not–his boss was simply familiar with the titles and couldn’t gauge the…

  • The Living Daylights (1987, John Glen)

    John Glen does a litany of disservices to The Living Daylights, mostly due to his inability to direct actors–Timothy Dalton specifically–but also on a number of technical levels. Glen relies far too much on rear screen projection for banal driving shots. Some of the other technical aspects–the bland sets and terrible lighting of them–aren’t necessarily…

  • Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Steven Spielberg)

    Rip-roaring, serial-inspired adventure set in the 1930s has archaeologist/adventurer/heartthrob Harrison Ford traveling the globe to keep the Nazis from getting their hands on the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Exciting, well-written (by Lawrence Kasdan), and beautifully directed by Spielberg. John Williams’s score is so important it could be top-billed. Sometimes moves a little too fast…