Rage

 

 (imdb)

RAGE-1972-Rancher Dan Logan (George C. Scott; also the director) has a nice life until he wakes up one day after camping with his son Chris (Nicholas Beauvy; later in THE TOOLBOX MURDERS (1978)) to find his cattle dead and Chris deathly sick. An army board headed by Col. Nickerson (Kenneth Tobey) (including Robert Walden and Stephen Young) seems concerned because it was an accidental spraying of some government poison gas. Major Halliford (Martin Sheen) and public health service guy Spencer (Barnard Hughes) assure him his son will be alright. 

Not true. Chris dies and the government seems to cover it up. Family physician Dr. Cardwell (Richard Basehart) finds some discrepancies in the medical reports. Logan sees through the government lies and finds his son’s dead body. Now a dying man, Logan goes for revenge but he dies before extracting real vengeance. Dabbs Greer is a doctor and Ed Lauter is an orderly. 

Two years after this Scott would direct one more film, the notorious THE SAVAGE IS LOOSE. This disappointing box office flop was actually based on a 1968 incident that took place in Utah where thousands of sheep were killed while the US army tested a new nerve gas. The army denied responsibility and other theories were presented. However, documents released 30 years after the incident occurred seem to say the army was at fault.

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Stan Lee Has a Cameo!

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN-2012-Hollywood couldn't stop when they were ahead could they? I'll say Sam Raimi's 2004 version wasn't perfect but he did a good adaptation. Why not 10 years later did they have to "re-invent" the whole thing over again?? The makers of this could have cut to the chase at least and just included a brief introduction on how the old web-head came to be but no they had to start all over again although the origins are basically the same. This time however nerdy science brain photograph taking Peter Parker has a mysterious missing father (Campbell Scott) who was once friends with the one armed Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) now head of a technology corporation working with spiders. Flash Thompson is still the dumb muscled bully but when Peter after gaining his super powers humiliates him in front of the whole gym it's Peter who gets in trouble and receives a stern lecture from his doomed Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen). Hey! Someone has to defend bullies, right?

But in fact Peter is kind of a fuck up, acting very dysfunctional and even forgetting to do things for his devoted Aunt May (Sally Field). Later Peter strikes up a relationship with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) who's father (Dennis Leary, Dennis Leary? Really? At least THE DARK KNIGHT had Gary Oldman) of course is the police captain trying to arrest the crime-fighter. Andrew Garfield is a total failure in the title role who instead of being the wisecracking hero is more like a smug bully himself. Connors later turns himself into The Lizard but of course instead of a being a lizard man it's a huge mutated CGI monster. The stupidest part is how The Lizard finds out Peter secret ID. After one of their encounters he finds a camera stamped "property of Peter Parker"!

Director Marc Webb (who also made the romance  (500) OF SUMMER) should stick to making Jesse McCartney videos. Unfortunately this was a hit and Part 2 is in post-production at the time of this writing. Too bad no one told him the phrase: "With great power comes great responsibility"....

Sorry for the rant...thanks for reading!