Seeing as how I raved about this film and James Caan’s performance earlier this week, it only seems appropriate that today’s scene that I love should come from 1981’s Thief. Here is the famous diner scene, featuring Caan and Tuesday Weld. Caan later said that he considered this to be the best acting he had ever done.
Since Iron Man first hit theaters in the summer of 2008, especially with the post-credits scene of Nick Fury asking Tony Stark if he knew anything about the Avengers Initiative, comic book fans have always been hoping that all the Marvel Comics properties would soon interact with each other. X-Men and Fantastic Four characters were controlled by 20th Century Fox.
This began to change in 2011 with the massive hack of Sony servers which gave the public behind-the-scenes info on Sony execs worried about the Spider-Man film franchise and how it was lagging behind Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe under the control of uber-producer Kevin Feige. In just a few years after this hack rumors of Spider-Man being loaned out to become part of the MCU became fact.
The next major shift in fans wanting all of Marvel properties becoming part of the MCU was Disney’s purchase and merger with 20th Century Fox in 2017 and completed in 2019. With just a few small restrictions here and there (Universal still hold the rights to the Incredible Hulk character but allowed Disney to the character), the MCU was now pretty much complete.
The first thing fans wanted was a new take on Marvel Comics’ first family: The Fantastic Four.
There’s been several attempts to put the Fantastic Four on the big-screen. From the 1994 unreleased Roger Corman low-budget film to the three films when 20th Century Fox was still a separate studio, fans never really bought into those iterations. But now that the first family was back under Marvel Studios control, especially with Kevin Feige as producer, fans were once again hopeful.
The first official trailer is now out and it looks like it will lean heavily on the Fantastic Four’s 1960’s origins right down to the retro-futuristic design and theme. How the film will explain where the team has been during the MCU timeline will be a narrative that a team of screenwriters and director Matt Shankman will have to navigate.
Fantastic Four: First Steps arrives in theaters on July 25, 2025.
I’m passionate about movies, but my day job consists of providing high quality tax planning and preparation services for a wide variety of clients in the Central Arkansas area. After a couple of months of 70-90 hour work weeks, April 16th is the day that I can begin to focus a little less on work and a little more on the things I truly love. I can’t wait to continue to share my passion for movies, music, Charles Bronson, Chow Yun-Fat, and so many other things with all of you. I need a few days to get some rest and get my mind straight, but I’ll soon be back to sharing my opinions and my life! Thanks to all of you who read my work! ❤️
After stagecoach rodeo racer John Bishop is framed for causing a competitor to have an accident, he’s hauled off to jail. Fortunately, Bishop’s boss, Bob Leadly (Henry B. Walthall), comes through for Bishop and helps him escape from the jail. To thank Bob, Bishop heads down to Mexico to search for Bob’s son, Bart (Paul Fix). The last that Bob heard, Bart was running with an outlaw gang called “The Brotherhood of Death.” The only way get out of the Brotherhood of Death is to die.
By an amazing coincidence both Bart and Bishop’s girlfriend, Mary (Shirley Palmer), are in the Mexican town of Sonora. To try to get Bart to return home, Bishop goes undercover and infiltrates the gang. Once inside, Bishop discovers that gang leader Monte Black (J.P. McGowan) is planning on robbing the silver mine that belongs to Mary’s father.
This is a John Wayne B-western, typical of the poverty row productions that he was making before John Ford cast him as the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach and made him into a star. This one features the usual horse chases and bar fights and John Wayne gives a solid-enough performance in the lead role. The most interesting thing about it is that, even though it’s a western, it’s set in modern times. I guess frontier days lasted longer in some parts of the county than in others.
John Wayne’s horse, Duke, appears in this picture and shows again that he was the most talented of all the horse actors in the 30s. He earned his co-starring credit.
“I’ve seen horrors… horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that… but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror… Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces… seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember… I… I… I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn’t know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it… I never want to forget. And then I realized… like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God… the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling… without passion… without judgment… without judgment! Because it’s judgment that defeats us.”
My latest “Scenes I Love” Monologue Edition comes courtesy of the great Marlon Brando as Col. Kurtz from Francis For Coppola’s magnus opus, Apocalypse Now.
The scene is the Kurtz monologue describing the horror he has seen and how it has shaped his thought process and concept on how to fight the enemies he has been tasked to fight and also condemned for the methods he has used to achieve results.
Shot and framed with Brando’s face half in shadows as he describes how the horrors he has seen and committed is just a reflection of the war they’re fighting and how emotions and judgment from those who have not experience and committed such horrors is the path to defeat.
Brando’s time in front of the camera is not very much in the whole runtime of the film, but from beginning to end his shadowy presence looms over everyone and this 5-minute monologue becomes the exclamation mark that succinctly explains the entire theme of the film: “In an insane world, the mad men are the ones who are sane”.
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
136 years ago today, film and comedy pioneer Charlie Chaplin was born. It’s time for….
After stagecoach rodeo racer John Bishop is framed for causing a competitor to have an accident, he’s hauled off to jail. Fortunately, Bishop’s boss, Bob Leadly (Henry B. Walthall), comes through for Bishop and helps him escape from the jail. To thank Bob, Bishop heads down to Mexico to search for Bob’s son, Bart (Paul Fix). The last that Bob heard, Bart was running with an outlaw gang called “The Brotherhood of Death.” The only way get out of the Brotherhood of Death is to die.
Through the Shattered Lens 