Weathered cattleman Wil Andersen (John Wayne) finds himself in a bit of a fix. He’s about to set off on the four hundred mile cattle drive to Belle Fourche with 1500 head of cattle ready for market when gold fever strikes a nearby town. Andersen loses his cowboys to the gold strike; with the town virtually abandoned because of the gold rush, he has no cattle drovers. Andersen is initially amused when his friend, Anse (Slim Pickens) suggests that he use the local schoolboys, but when they show up at his ranch one morning eager to try out, he gives them a shot. On the first day of summer, they all join in on the cattle drive, accompanied by cook Jedediah Nightlinger (Roscoe Lee Browne). The young lads prove their mettle on the drive and the trials of the trail turn the journey into a rite of passage for them under ...

  In the city of Richmond, rocker Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) is abducted during a benefit concert by a motorcycle gang lead by the memorably owl-coiffed Raven (Willem Dafoe). Reva (Deborah Van Valkenburgh), a fan of the singer summons her renegade brother Tom Cody (Michael Pare) to help rescue Ellen. Cody, who has an unsavory reputation with the local police, is also Ellen’s ex-boyfriend. Cody returns to Richmond where he assembles an offbeat band of rescuers, including Ellen’s mouthy manager, Billy Fish (Rick Moranis) and a tomboyish war veteran (?!) named McCoy (Amy Madigan). The group heads into “the Battery”, the bad area of the city where Raven’s gang holes up at warehouse-sized bar and roadhouse. Ellen’s rescue is handled easily, but not without a sizable amount of combustive mayhem and calamity. Pursued by Raven and his gang, Cody and his bunch must fight their way across the city to Richmond, where they will ...

  “One Six Right” takes us on a journey through the history of flight and the skies in this informative documentary on the local airport. “One Six Right”, the name of the main landing/take-off strip of the Van Nuys Airport in the San Fernando Valley, explains the history behind the busiest general aviation airport in the world. It follows the rise of the airport and each one of its major ownership transitions. At same time it gives us a wonderful recap on the birth of aviation and aerodynamics. General aviation is a term for a local airport where you can park planes, fly private jets, and get away from the mass commercial airlines at International airports like LAX (Los Angeles International Airport). The documentary interviews pilots of the past and present, with the occasional cameo by media figures such as news anchors Hal Fishman and Paul Moyer, as well as director Sydney Pollack, all ...

  Jerry Lewis started the whole spin on “The Nutty Professor”, which in itself was an interpretation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. The whole concept, in Stevenson’s work, then in Lewis’s and finally in Murphy’s, is the conceit that inside every ordinary man is an extraordinary one—in Lewis’ film and this sequel to a remake, he’s brimming with sexual power and suave charisma, waiting to get out. Where Stevenson’s own treatment lay in tragedy with a touch of horror, Lewis and Murphy played to lowbrow humor that only the French truly seem to hold in esteem. But Murphy’s movie was a success, prompting this sequel. As with Lewis, Murphy portrays a university professor who’s incredibly intelligent but lacks confidence and social graces. For Lewis’s character, he was hampered by was ugliness and shyness. Murphy’s Professor Sherman Klump is obscenely overweight, as is his whole family, whom the viewer gets ...

  The year is 1910. In China, the country is beset by foreign occupiers whose oppressive air of Western superiority rankles the population. Exacerbating this situation is the inability of any Chinese fighter to defeat a Western combatant. At a Shanghai combat exhibition, sprightly and adept Huo Yuan Jia (Jet Li) steps into the arena and quickly makes mincemeat of three talented competitors. With only one match left to win, Huo faces off with a Japanese combatant (Nakamura Shidou) sponsored by the British and the story flashes back to thirty years before. Although young Huo’s father (Collin Chou) is a powerful martial artist, he refuses to train his son. However, Huo’s passion for training cannot be stifled, and he grows up to be a highly-esteemed local Wu Shu martial arts champion, with a cadre of students and acolytes. His cocky nature brings him to ruin when he rashly confronts another local champion over a ...