DVD Talk reviews for Friday, August 23rd, 2019
 

<div style="font-weight:bold;font-size:15px">Highly Recommended</div><blockquote><table><tr><td valign="top"><a href="http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=73978"><img src="http://images.dvdtalk.com/covers/ts1564604276.png" border="0" style="margin-right:5px;margin-bottom:5px" align="left" /></a><a href="http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=73978"><strong>The Chairman (Blu-ray)</strong></a><br /><small>by Stuart Galbraith IV</small><hr /><span class="rss:item"> <p><a href="http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=73978"> </a><I>The Chairman</I> (1969), an espionage/sci-fi thriller starring Gregory Peck and directed by J. Lee Thompson, was one of dozens of critical and financial flops that plagued 20th Century-Fox during the late-1960s. Critics hated it, and for a time it seemed to vanish. Years later I remember catching it on commercial television, beginning with a dialogue scene between Peck and an actor playing the Chairman of the title, Mao Zedong himself. Nonplussed, I continued watching this strange movie for a time, fascinated by scenes of Peck sneaking around China at the height of the Cultural Revolution. <p>Turns out the movie is most entertaining, if occasionally preposterous. Tautly edited, this relatively short (98-minute) feature is fast-paced and genuinely exciting. Peck, as he almost always was, is excellent, and the dialogue written for him by Ben Maddow (adapting Jay Richard Kennedy's novel) is witty and i...<a href="http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=73978">Read the entire review &raquo;</a></p></p></b></i> </span></td></tr></table></blockquote>