Movies you saw in November

Charley Varrick (1973) well acted crime-drama with Walter Matthau, Andrew Robinson (played Scorpio in Dirty Harry, one of the BEST "psycho killer" villains of all time), Joe Don Baker and John Vernon (later played Dean Wormer in Animal House). good acting, good plot and decent action. Matthau is mostly known for his comedies with Jack Lemmon BUT he was also excellent in dramas like Fail-Safe as Professor Groeteschele and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three as Lieutenant Garber. Sheree North is VERY tasty  as the passport photographer Jewell Everett.

plays on Sundance channel again Friday Nov 15th @ 4:30 pm and again Saturday Nov 16th @ 10:30 am pacific times. recommend recording because of Sundance's commercials. I rate it  

watched the one hour documentary Hitler on Trial, which I recorded last weekend on PBS, last night. pretty much "unknown history" about how J ewish lawyer Hans Litten almost stopped the Nazi Party in Berlin cold with the 1931 Tanzpalast Eden Trial of the "Murder Storm 33" Nazi SA men who had assaulted and murdered a group of Communist Party members at a social gathering. Litten subpoenaed Hitler and on cross-examination was able to get him admit he had ordered the attack through Joseph Goebbels.

unfortunately both Hitler and Goebbels escaped prosecution and when the Nazis came to power in 1933, Litten was one of the first people on their "hit list". history might have been completely different IF the Weimar Republic court in Berlin had prosecuted and convicted both of murder

an excellent not generally know outside of Germany story that hopefully will air again on PBS soon >>> https://www.cpbn.org/program/hitler-trial.    

The Lincoln Lawyer-

OUTSTANDING Matthew McConaughey movie. EXCELLENT plot, cast and acting. HIGHLY recommend   

agree 100%. was "Godzilla meets Transformers" and it just didn't work. felt like I had been ripped off using a free PPV certificate.

watched the 1971 made for TV, which was later released to theaters, "psycho thriller" Duel last night. early directing work by Steven Spielberg. excellent acting by a then fairly young Dennis Weaver as a terrified motorist stalked by the mostly unseen driver of a mysterious tanker truck. had quite a few "filler" scenes of the car and truck just running around that I "paged thru" and the ending was kind of lame BUT overall the story had a real "Stephen King" story feel to it and some pretty good suspense in spots

it is on Encore-Suspense channel again Tuesday Nov 19th @ 10:30 am repeating Wednesday Nov 20th @ 2:50 am. also plays on RetroPlex channel Monday Nov 25th @ 12:00 am (midnight) pacific time. relatively short @ 90 minutes and I rate it  

watched The Challenger Disaster (2013) made for TV movie shown on both the Discovery and Discovery-Science channels about how NASA tried to cover up the cause of the spacecraft blowing up on launch January 28, 1986. was pretty well acted by William Hurt as Dr Richard Feynman, who "blew the whistle" on the solid rocket booster O-rings being the problem and NASA's (AND the White House's) "Go Fever" to launch in cold weather causing the explosion. also stared Bruce Greenwood as Air Force General Donald Kutyna, head of the Titan program, Brian Dennehy as Regan Administration political hack William Rogers, Chairman of the investigation (who lead the effort to "sweep it all under the rug") and Eve Best as former astronaut doctor Sally Ride. a LOT of the dialog was taken straight from the committee transcripts. hopefully it will air again soon on Discovery  

also watched two classic "Cops vs Bad Guys" with the Cops being as BAD as the Bad Guys movies, King of New York (1990) with Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne, David Caruso and Wesley Snipes AND Phoenix (1998)  with Ray Liotta, Anthony LaPaglia, Daniel Baldwin and Anjelica Huston. relatively unknown actor Tom Noonan is an excellent villain as "Chicago" and Giovanni Ribisi has an early career bit part as "Joey".

both played on the EPIX channels and hopefully will air again soon. two of the better movies in the "shady cops" genre along with the 1992 Bad Lieutenant    

check their Wikipage for the basic plot first. in most cases this would be a "spoiler" BUT with Cloud Atlas I think it is useful because the switching around between the six stories can become VERY confusing IF you don't know the basic plots. was my third time watching the movie (and after checking their Wikipage) that I finally started to "get it"

>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Atlas_(film)

'Only God Forgives'

Ryan Gosling flick..All style, no substance, boring..very, very, very little plot. Kinda bizarre in a wannabe David Lynch type of way.

Sucked.

I'll tape "Lincoln" on your recomdendation.

have yet to see anyone that did NOT think The Lincoln Lawyer was excellent 

happened to watch The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) last night and thought it was a pretty good historical drama with enough "blood & guts" in the battle scenes to satisfy most action fans. pretty good cast with Milla Jovovich as Joan of Arc, John Malkovich as Charles VII of France, Faye Dunaway as Yolande of Aragon and Dustin Hoffman as "The Conscience". gets "religious weird" in spots but think the battles and generally good acting make up for that.

GOOD movie for those that like historic drama. plays on Starz-Cinema again Thursday Nov 28th @ 9:10 pm and Encore-Action Saturday Nov 30th @ 9:00 pm   

Lincoln Lawyer was a good movie. 

The Conjuring was a great movie until I thought it got kind of goofy at the end.  But still better than average for a horror movie.

Arbitrage was a great movie.  Perfect role for Richard Gere.

The Purge was an interesting concept but didn't think the movie was very good. 

Rounders will always be one of my favorite movies.