Uriah43

This film begins with a man named "Sam Prescott" (Dick Elliott) walking into a hotel bar in Philadelphia, flashing $10,000 in cash to the bartender and a stranger nearby. He then invites the stranger to share his room due to the limited space at the hotel because of a convention being held there. The next morning, Sam is found dead in his hotel room. The scene shifts to a young woman named "Mildred 'Millie' Baxter" (Kim Hunter), who is boarding a train from Ohio to New York City to meet her new husband. Unfortunately, when she arrives at the hotel, her husband, "Paul Baxter" (Dean Jagger), is nowhere to be found. Unsure of what to do, she decides to stay at the hotel until he arrives. During this time, she meets a former boyfriend named "Fred Graham" (Robert Mitchum), who eventually guides her to the police to file a missing persons report. Strangely enough, instead of taking her to the missing persons' office, Fred takes her to a homicide detective named "Detective Blake" (Neil Hamilton), who agrees to investigate. Not long afterward, Millie receives a call from Paul, telling her to meet him at a specific location in the city. From then on, Paul begins to act strangely, causing Millie to wonder if he might be involved in Sam Prescott's murder. Of course, having married Paul after only three dates, she's unsure about what to do with her new husband. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was an entertaining film noir that captured the murky atmosphere needed for a film of this sort. Likewise, the acting was equally solid, with Robert Mitchum and Kim Hunter playing their parts quite well. In any case, I enjoyed this movie for the most part, and I have rated it accordingly.

This remake of the 1929 film of the same name begins in Arizona with a wealthy rancher named "Don Fernando" (Pedro de Cordoba), who writes to his grandson "Carlos Hernandez" (Cesar Romero) in Spain, inviting him to visit and discuss who will take over his ranch after he passes away. Additionally, Don Fernando has a beautiful ward named "Rosita" (Patricia Morison) living in his hacienda, whom he hopes to marry off to his nephew if he inherits the ranch as well. This infuriates Don Fernando's nephew, "Ricardo" (Rico Cortez), who wants the ranch and Rosita for himself. To prevent this, Ricardo sends a couple of cowboys to ambush Carlos before he can arrive. They set an ambush on the stagecoach carrying Carlos and, after killing the driver and shooting Carlos in the chest, ride off, thinking they have succeeded. However, what they don't realize is that the "Cisco Kid" (also played by Cesar Romero) and his good friend "Gordito" (Chris-Pin Martin) have witnessed the entire ambush and, wanting to scavenge any valuables inside, stop the stagecoach to see what they can find. To their surprise, they notice that although Carlos is badly wounded, he is still alive and quickly take him to a friend named "Mama Lopez" (Inez Palange) to hopefully save his life. During this time, the Cisco Kid learns the reason Carlos is traveling to Don Fernando's ranch, and since they look identical, he decides to impersonate Carlos for his own purposes. Needless to say, Ricardo is very upset to see Carlos impersonating him before Don Fernando and becomes determined to kill him before he can inherit the ranch and take Rosita away. Meanwhile, although he definitely wants the ranch, the Cisco Kid, being a womanizer, cannot decide whether he prefers Rosita or Don Fernando's beautiful goddaughter, "Maria" (Lynne Roberts). From what I understand, the original 1929 movie starring Warner Baxter as the Cisco Kid has been lost and is no longer available, so I have no idea how this later version of "Romance of the Rio Grande" compares to it. What I can say, however, is that, even though Warner Baxter was sensational in his role as the Cisco Kid in previous movies, I thought that Cesar Romero performed reasonably well here, with the banter between him and Gordito being especially amusing. Be that as it may, although this film is quite dated, I still found it rather entertaining, and I have rated it accordingly.

This film starts with a man named "Seija Kashiwada" (Yusuke Yamamoto) throwing the body of a young woman into a well. The scene then shifts to a high school teacher named "Akane Ayukawa" (Satomi Isohara), who confiscates a cellphone used by one of her students, which prevents her from watching a mysterious video linked to recent deaths. Yet even though Akane temporarily prevented her student from accessing the streaming video, she couldn't stop her from doing so after school. The next day, Akane learns that the student has committed suicide. Shocked, another student named "Lisa Kitayama" (Hikari Takara) decides to investigate the video herself, but is saved when Akane arrives just in time. The problem is that the spirit named "Sadako Yamamura" (Ai Hashimoto), released by Seiji, is not only intent on killing Lisa but also wants to take over Akane's body because Akane has powers Sadako needs to complete her mission of killing every person on Earth. For those unfamiliar, this film is part of a series that began with the 1998 movie "Ringu," followed by two sequels, the first being "Spiral" that same year. Unfortunately, "Spiral" didn't perform well at the box office, and a different sequel called "Rungu 2" was produced in 1999, which then spawned another sequel the next year. As for this particular movie, it picks up where "Spiral" left off, even though it's been around 13 years since then. That said, the film acknowledges the passage of time a couple of times, but it doesn't mention any characters from the previous films except Sadako. So, you don't need to watch the earlier movies to understand what's happening. I should also note that although this film was made in 3D, I wasn't able to see it in that format, so I can't say how much better it was than the version I saw. Hopefully, the 3D effects were impressive because the 2D version didn't add much over the previous films in the series, with the excessive reliance on CGI toward the end being a particularly poor choice. Regardless, I don't think this was a bad movie necessarily, but I was somewhat disappointed overall, and I have rated it accordingly.