Boasting a pretty decent cast and promising plenty of brooding characters, DEADFALL looked to be a modern dirty noir. Flawed characters do morally questionable things, people get hurt, relationships are betrayed. Sounds like a fun night out in the snow. Could it deliver?
It shouldn’t have taken the death of the great Harold Ramis to make me want to go back and revisit his work. GHOSTBUSTERS is an all time favorite and GROUNDHOG DAY is a top ten type comedy as well. I hadn’t seen CADDYSHACK in a decade or so, and it was time to fix that.
“What are you doing?!?”
“The best I can!”
I have never seen CHAIN REACTION before, and that exchange, from a trailer I saw probably 19 years ago, has been embedded in my head for near two decades. It’s the ultimate in 90s action one-liner. It’s up there with the great EXECUTIVE DECISION bit when Kurt Russell yells “We’re not gonna make it!” and Steven Seagal yells “You are!” before getting blown up. I miss cheesy crap like that.
Anyway. I finally saw CHAIN REACTION. It is amazing that I had never seen this because there are maybe three action flicks in the history of the 1990s that I have yet to see. That isn’t a brag. It’s a confession.
After being impressed greatly by Kenji Mizoguchi’s UGESTU, I’ll certainly give anything else of his a shot. WOMEN OF THE NIGHT comes in five years earlier than UGETSU, and is a very different film in tone. This one surprised me with its cynicism and fatalism. But, as you will see, it is also very well made.
Continue reading ‘johnlink ranks YORU NO ONNATACHI (WOMEN OF THE NIGHT) (1948)’
A whole bunch of original content was drummed up for the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. One such production was the television film KILLING KENNEDY, based on Bill O’Reilly’s book, which aired on National Geographic. It sounded watchable, and it had been lounging on the DVR for the past several months, so we gave it a run.
As much as I say that I love me some Akira Kurosawa, there are far too many of his masterpieces that I have not seen. His retelling of Macbeth, THRONE OF BLOOD, is one such movie. We’re switching cable companies and losing our current DVR next week, so this is a perfect excuse to get at some titles I have been putting off for too long.
Continue reading ‘johnlink ranks KUMONOSU-JO (THRONE OF BLOOD) (1957)’
The theater I work for is considering running a program where we introduce a movie we are currently running (if it were right now, for example, we might do MONUMENT MEN). We would start with a short spoiler-free introduction, watch the movie, then have a led discussion about the film afterwards. We have some customers that do this sort of thing on their own, so we figured we would help them by organizing it. Anyway, before we get going, we decided to do a test run with THE TRUMAN SHOW, for our employees, led by myself and fellow manager (and constant reader) Brad. Not that any of this matters for the review. So, I suppose, I can shut up now and make the jump. SPOILERS BELOW
I’m always a little late to the Oscar party. Sometimes a year, sometimes several, sometimes a decade. With AMERICAN HUSTLE, happily, I am only a couple of months late. So thanks for having me. I know most everyone has gone home. I’ll just munch on the cold, unwanted hors d’oeuvres and finish off the seedy bottom of the sangria bowl. If there’s anything left that hasn’t been said at this party, feel free to stop by my table and have a chat.
I eat up these sort of twisty illusion films. NOW YOU SEE ME promises a solid cast doing all sorts of trickery and magic and theft. It promises a daring mix of a crime film with a magician film. Does it deliver?
SIDE EFFECTS is a throwback thriller by director Steven Soderbergh. Not filled with gratuitous nudity enough to be a 90s Michael Douglas movie and not tame enough to be a 50s paranoia flick, this is a film which mixes a simple story-line (even if it is filled with twists) and narrowly focused sensibilities. Is it good? We will consider that below. The second half of the review will contain some spoilers, but I will give that warning in advance.
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