By no means a great work, this television movie – a pilot for a series that was never made – does have some strong moments.

The plot focuses on a team of Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles trying to take down a mobster and a corrupt civil servant. James Olmos plays the straight arrow US Attorney, David Canary is his younger assistant, and Robert Pine (later to land a starring role in CHiPs), the naïve young law school graduate. Together they doggedly pursue Mafia boss Dominic Leopold (Gilbert Roland), piece by piece.

Of particular note is William Shatner as a bent Director of Utilities, and best of all, Richard S Castellano. He plays a minor mafioso who, after his brother falls foul of the big guys, tries to eke out some semblance of justice from a messed up situation. It’s after The Godfather, and he plays a wholly different kind of character to Clemenza – with nervousness, uncertainty, fear, and a basic decency.

It’s directed by journeyman Buzz Kulik, with too many talky two-shots, but the occasional flourish (such as the scenes at the familiar concrete basin of the LA River ). Director of photography is Charles F Wheeler, who had previously DPed Silent Running, and would later reteam with Kulik on The Pursuit Of DB Cooper. Elmer Bernstein contributes an of-its-time jazzy soundtrack, complete with callbacks to his score for The Great Escape.

1.48GB | 1h 36m | 640×480 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/4F72CF9D754B8B0/Incident.on.a.Dark.Street.1973.480p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-PTP.mkv

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The post Buzz Kulik – Incident on a Dark Street (1973) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
An alien virus’s brief pit stop in the new American West, starkly documented by Michael Crichton and Robert Wise. A satellite crashes in a New Mexico burg, soon the place is filled with bodies whose circulatory systems have turned to powder — these are the best sequences, full of hushed dread and unnerving use of widescreen dead spaces (the camera focuses on the placid, dusty face of a fallen villager, then tilts up to frame a couple of researchers approaching in hazmat suits and a helicopter whirring against a cobalt sky). The scientific team is rounded up: Exposition-dispenser Arthur Hill, surgeon James Olson (who gets a crush on the computer’s female voice), splenetic researcher Kate Reid, and veteran doctor David Wayne (“A hippie! He’s going to a love-in,” his suspicious wife cries as he packs for the secret mission). As befits a biological procedural, the already ponderous pace slows down to a crawl as the quartet makes its way through level after level of sterilization at an underground Nevada laboratory. (All the plodding repetition is worth it for Reid’s double-take as she learns that the coat of chalk covering her body is the charred remains of her outer skin layer.) The only contaminated survivors are a soused old man (George Mitchell) and a bawling baby, the interplanetary visitor is identified as an olive spatter which dilates into molecular origami patterns on an animated screen. All too clearly the bridge between The Day the Earth Stood Still and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the picture handles the material too literally: Covert germ warfare is dutifully alluded (“Establishment gonna go boom,” Reid snaps), yet Wise settles for Olson dodging laser beams instead of noticing, like Burroughs did, that “language is a virus from space.” Bringing Vietnam into the equation is a job for Romero (The Crazies), though the film nevertheless manages to close on a disquieting note, with Douglas Trumbull’s ominous solarized abstractions suggesting a sort of computer-age lettrism.

+Commentary by film critic Bryan Reesman

2.38GB | 2h 10m | 854×362 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/7A1E7B32215D469/The.Andromeda.Strain.1971.Remastered.480p.AAC.BluRay.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

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The post Robert Wise – The Andromeda Strain (1971) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Paul Newman made his directorial debut and Newman’s wife, Joanne Woodward, stars as Rachel Cameron, a 35-year-old unmarried schoolteacher who feels as though she’s wasted her life. Rachel’s best friend, Calla Mackie (Estelle Parsons), invites her to attend a religious revival meeting. Here Rachel is swept up in the emotional fervor orchestrated by a young guest preacher (Terry Kiser). This is the first of several cathartic incidents which convince Rachel to kick over the traces and express her own needs and emotions. She has a brief sexual liaison with an old family friend (James Olson), and is delighted at the notion that she might have become pregnant. Rachel ends up alone and childless (her “pregnancy” was nothing more than a benign cyst), but still determined to forge a new life for herself. Based the novel A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence, Rachel, Rachel won New York Film Critics awards for both Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, and an Oscar nomination for Joanne Woodward.

Paul Newman - (1968) Rachel, Rachel.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 41 min
Size: 	2.26 GiB
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https://nitro.download/view/0ABD0F18DCE243D/Paul_Newman_-_(1968)_Rachel,_Rachel.mkv

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The post Paul Newman – Rachel, Rachel (1968) first appeared on Cinema of the World.