Reviews

While most murder mysteries have red herrings, misdirection, obfuscation, and generally a definitive ending and solution, Basic Instinct kept me guessing up to the very end, and then some. While there are a few lacking moments, such as when officer Nilson is killed by a .38 revolver and det. Curran is suspected and his gun is checked (a .40 caliber automatic), I cried foul. However, I cried murderer at the screen when I thought I'd figured it out, and I was wrong too.

A well crafted, well paced, sensuous story from beginning to end, Basic Instinct is that mysterious, sultry woman from across the club. Don't cross her though, or you might end up in her next book.

A great insight into the world of Enron; a different time and different world of the late 90s, dot com, and the incredible rise and fall of a would be empire. It's amazing to see just how far Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and Andy Fastow were able to pull the wool over the world's eyes for that brief 1997-2001 period. It's rare to find a documentary that can make you go from wonder and amazement to pure disgust at how far down greed can take a human being.

Makes accounting look dangerous!

I've long been a proponent of getting a crazy person to perform the role of a crazy character, and who better to fill the shoes of a suicidal, unhinged, fast talking cop than Mel Gibson? In what may have been the defining role of his career, if not the finest performance he's ever given, Gibson truly shines here. Lethal Weapon carries the action with an itchy trigger finger, and has enough brawls to keep you interested, even where the plot may feel a bit thin. Though Gibson in particular takes on more superhero-like traits than human ones personified in Danny Glover's character, the original buddy cop formula works to perfection here without feeling tired or trite, even though this movie is now 30 years old.

Perhaps the quintessential Sir Roger Moore Bond movie; this movie plays out beautifully from start to finish and checks off all the boxes we've come to expect from the British Spy- a larger than life villain with an egomaniacal (but in this case, believable!) plot, beautiful girls, gadgets, cars, exotic locales, and just a touch of that winking Bond charm that goes a mile on cheese and suave alone.

Barbara Bach plays a wonderful Anya Amasova, an alluring Russian agent on par with Bond himself in a story that pits them against each other, but forces them to work together when their respective governments need to recover a pair of missing nuclear submarines. The plot works wonderfully for the cold war-era tensions between the USSR and the western world, as well as featuring some great on location shooting in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, Sardinia, the Bahamas, and in the Austrian Alps.

This film is unusually engaging and gripping for a Bond film, and for me, the winks and cheesy sound effects here and there worked perfectly to resolve tension. The dialogue is snappy, the jokes hit their marks, and the story is complete without horrible contrivances found in some other Bond flicks- it's won on brains (and a bit of brawn) alone. Fan favorite villain Jaws makes his first appearance here, as does the wonderfully awful WetBike in its first ever ride on screen!

Definitely a must see Bond!

Very well crafted caper film, excellent music choice, but that goes without saying. A movie scored with all licensed music like this can be difficult to pull off, but Wright does it with flying colors and flashy cars. How everything is on beat and cued by music and a mix of wink wink moments with rewinding songs, or signifying confusion and stunned moments with a lack of music is a great touch.

The action is also excellent- gripping when it needs to be, but never gratuitous. Kevin Spacey steals every scene he's in, but the rest of the cast also brought their A game in a vibrant, fun, action packed movie with just a little bit of cheese. 8.5/10.

Decidedly not my favorite Bond film. Lazenby does a passable impression of Connery, but Sir Sean he is not. The editing in the movie is terrible, with jump cuts, shaky cam, non matching daylight scenes, and scenes that watch like a cross between an early kung fu movie and Adam West Batman KERPOW! Action. The characterization is also lacking, given that the main girl Tracy, portrayed by the lovely Diana Rigg (Olenna, Game of Thrones), disappears for half the movie and is largely irrelevant other than to start the plot- then is made artificially important later on. Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the most famous Bond villian, also has machiavellian plots in this movie, but made even more far fetched with his Anakin Skywalker-level illogical thinking. Nothing really works about this movie... no wonder it's been largely forgotten in the Bond franchise.

You're not really looking for the secret. You want to be fooled.

An early 1900s period piece about dueling magicians doesn't exactly sound like the beginning of a description to a mystery/thriller movie, but maybe that's the magician known as Christopher Nolan's trick after all. Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, and certainly not least Michael Caine deliver great performances as a pair of egotistical magicians, each with their own flair. Bale has the tricks, but Jackman has the showmanship and the ability to wow the audience.

Woven in among this is a tale of two men in obsessive competition to be the best, a tale of revenge, and a tale of the powerful price one must pay in order to become the best. Far be it from me to ruin anyone on the plot details of this movie, but suffice to say that the magic in this movie won't be lost on anyone, but it will certainly leave you with a sense of wonder.

A powerful message that neither glorifies racism, it's effects, or countereffects of the disease it symtomizes. I was most impressed by director Kaye's ability to entice the audience to sympathize with a violent, hateful protagonist in some tender moments of familial love, and yet revile his deeds by portraying them in their most brutal, realistic light. Derek Vinyard is not a good man, but under the intolerance and hate is a wound that is not dissimilar to the persons of color he victimized. I was also appreciative of how Kaye also doesn't portray any one group as purely a victim, in what could have easily been a (more) racially charged and motivated film than it was. It doesn't glorify gang activity, white supremacy, prison life, or racial struggles in any way, but instead paints a visceral picture of the multifaceted reality that it represents; a microcosm of real life... That nothing is fair, and it's how we choose to address the challenges we're presented. Hate never made anyone's life better.

The Negotiator follows in the familiar footsteps of Dog Day Afternoon- a wronged man takes a group of hostages, and it turns into a complete police and media circus. The wrinkle in The Negotiator, however, is that Sam J. Is a cop himself- a Hostage Negiotiator, at that. His motive for setting up a hostage situation is an underlying mystery that encompasses a conspiracy, fraud, and then assassination. He specifically chooses his hostages from a group of cops, informants, and executives, and executes his plan without mercy- and knows exactly how far he can take things, because he knows the gameplan of the police on the street below. On another afternoon, that would be him down there.

Without giving away the story, there are several other movies which follow the same beats, like John Q (2002) and Inside Man (2006), but The Negotiator is by far the best- thanks to two strong performances by the ever-good Kevin Spacey and a Sam Jackson who is at his absolute best as a righteously angry, rant-filled cop bent on figuring out who screwed him over. Where Inside Man and John Q have a few hokey moments where the audience's suspension of belief is tested, The Negotiator has very few of these, and definitely has twists to support the helical chain of plot that makes up the body of the film.

A drug trip like no other. At some point the audience must wonder when the money (and luck) runs out, someone dies, an overdose, an accident, or any number of things you see in a drug movie are going to inevitably occur. Terry Gillam turns this on its head and sends us on a gonzo ride through Las Vegas in the height of 70s drug culture. Keep an eye out for the cameos.

Johnny Depp is unrecognizable in this film as a fictionalized insert of Gonzo journalism creator Hunter Thompson, and Benecio Del Toro is equally as oddball and distorted as the sidekick, the lawyer Dr. Gonzo. I personally don't do drugs, but this is probably one of those films where a stupor could help make sense of the insanity contained therein.

Daniel Craig famously said in an October 2015 interview, immediately prior to the release of this film, that he'd "rather slash his wrists" than play Bond again. However, as of May 27th, 2018, Craig is again slated to be Bond for one last run in the coming Bond 25, which should be out late next year. Die Another Day, I guess. (/pun)

I've seen criticisms of Spectre that say that each scene is just ripped from other Bond movies, the setpieces, locales, and the plot itself. I understand what they're talking about. The opening Mexico City scene immediately reminds me of Live and Let Die's New Orleans, with Bond himself nearly dressed as Baron Samedi. No Bond movie is complete without an alpine skiing segment, neither is one a finished product without a car chase, Bond capture, or villain monologue. Herein lies both the problem and the charm of Bond as a series. Bond is a type of superhero- a one man army with looks to match his skills, resourceful, driven, suave, and above all- always gets the job done, no matter the circumstances. Each Bond film follows a similar path throughout, explores exotic locales, rendezvous with beautiful women, guns, gadgets, and a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred.

These trappings don't make Bond predictable, even if you know he's going to survive. It's how you reach that conclusion, and who makes it along the way that keeps us watching. With the recent trend of the Craig Bond films making meaningful decisions and impactful choices as to who lives and who dies, it adds a depth to Bond that maybe hasn't been there before- but furthermore adds an element of unpredictability to it. The Bond girl MIGHT die, but she just as well might fall in love with Bond as often as she betrays him for real. A focus on a bit less realistic motivated villains but with realistic means has also been a positive move, and Mendes does a nice job making Spectre a nice, rounded out package, but also subverting some expectations that could have made Spectre feel very stale. I have to commend Lea Seydoux (Madeline Swann) and Craig, as well as Ben Whishaw (Q) and Ralph Fiennes (M). Even if Craig is sick of playing Bond, he still delivers an energetic performance, and Seydoux's Swann is a refreshing change for a Bond girl, and probably the best since Eva Green as Vesper Lynd.

However, this movie is also overreliant on the previous Craig Bond films in a way that Bond hasn't been before. Passing references to previous Bonds are common in new films, and occasionally there will be repeat characters, but on the whole, Fleming's Bond was an episodic adventure involving Bond, M, Q, Moneypenny, a girl, and a villlain. They're timeless. Mendes attempting to string together Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, and Spectre together with just a few lines of dialogue and a certain octopus (as well as a name drop, ESB) just doesn't work. I shouldn't have to remember the plots to the last ten years of Bond films to remember who characters are and why they're important here, and I think that's where this movie missteps. I don't need the Bond cimematic universe, I just want a fun action adventure with a beautiful woma(e)n, cool cars and gadgets, a menacing villain, the classic John Barry sounds, and EON's penchant for great cinematography. This movie could have had the same stakes, and even introduced Blofeld again without having to tie in CR, QoS, and SF to make the plot go. With that, as well as making this movie nearly a direct sequel to Skyfall (as it takes place almost immediately following) marks a change in direction for the episodic franchise. Obviously with Craig's term as Bond coming to a close, this will shift the franchise back into a soft reset with a new story for whoever comes after, but I think that this new film has a chance to do something great with the contiguous format they've got going with Craig, if they can make it work within the bounds of Bond that have now been set up for over 50 years.

Call me old fashioned, but sometimes a good, old fashioned romp with Bond is just what we need.

The movie that started it all. If all was "Jason Voorhees", that is. Described by the director Sean Cunningham as a cash in on the sudden popularity of John Carpenter's "Halloween" slasher, Friday the 13th lives on as a cult classic. With its "Goosebumps" level of horror, a little blood, and some shaky camera work, apparently the audiences of 1980 were a lot more easily invoked to dread and terror- as the early 80s were a huge renaissance for the horror genre with films like The Shining, The Thing, Poltergeist, and Nightmare On Elm Street coming out all within three short years. However, what those movies did with acting, direction, and effects, Friday the 13th is low budget schlock by comparison.

Perhaps Friday the 13th codified the horror genre's stupid, sex crazed, teen protagonists-who-for-no-good-reason-find-reasons-to-go-off-by-themselves, but a welcome introduction to filmmaking, it is not. Convenience is excusable in some cases, but when literally every character does the complete opposite of what makes sense and ventures off on their own into the dark, I found myself watching with dark, if a bit disinterested enthusiasm, that they had what was coming to them for being so idiotic. The movie is entirely overreliant on shock value and jump scares to the point when each character manufactures a reason to walk out, their demise is following as close behind as their shadow.

It's a simple movie, and I suppose its place in history makes it worth watching once, but it's absolutely not anything I would want to revisit on a yearly basis.

Pretty In Pink is one of those films where, as an audience member, you feel a sense of ambivalence about what you're seeing, but within the bounds of reality. On some level, watching the emotional girlfriend boyfriend crush drama speaks to the inner 17 year old in everyone who actually attended high school. Conversely, the idea that Molly Ringwald is actually this poor girl engaging in some petty tier class warfare and bullying is a stretch. She adheres to the same stuck up attitude in every John Hughes era film, and this is no different. Her wardrobe in the film is source of ridicule from her preppier peers, but in today's world, she would be a hipster guy's (obscure) wet dream. To hammer home her relative lack of coin among the bourgeois Los Angeles youth, we see that she drives a 20 year old, beat up VW Karmann Ghia (which, truthfully was a collector car even then) and lives in a house (a house in a ritzy part of LA, mind you, not an apartment) with worn and old furniture. That's... About it. The shtick wears off about 30 minutes into the movie, and if it weren't for the verbal reminder every 10 minutes about the socioeconomic status of the characters, it never would have mattered. Of course, they want to paint this Romeo and Juliet type picture of the poor girl and her rich, sensitive boy, but it's all a beige backdrop onto which a single spot of white paint was spilled.

The dialogue in the film is honestly the only bright spot in an otherwise by-the-numbers teen angst dramedy, and certainly is the weakest of the John Hughes films (though he wrote, and did not direct this. Jon Cryer gives his performance as Duckie everything he's got, channeling his inner Travolta and Ferris Bueller with all the charisma he could muster. He certainly had the best dialogue, even if he gets the worst ending. Annie Potts as Iona is the other brightest spot in the cast, as the Goth record store owner with a habit of dating bad men (who, somehow, despite her no efforts, isn't able to give good advice to Ringwald's Andie). She's quirky and funny in a way that the movie needed a lot more of to drown out a no score in the 14th inning baseball game level dreariness of the rest of the cast. James Spader is completely wasted, and Andrew McCarthy comes off as a moron, not a playboy trust fund kid with a sensitive side.

The movie has its moments, but the plot it a bit tired, with no wrinkles of substance except for what seems like a disappointment of a twist ending where the girl ends up with the wrong guy, although she and he seem totally happy with it. Finish your John Hughes anthology, but don't end it with this one.

"Tell Your Children" or, better known as "Reefer Madness" is the story of how "marihuana" ruins the lives of the youth of America by causing them to commit heinous crimes of passion, including, but not limited to: hit and run, vehicular assault, sexual assault, furious piano playing, murder, uncontrollable laughter, perjury, suicide and last, but not least: having fun. The unintentional comedy that results from these wacky situations keeps the film moving, and the feeling light, despite the seriousness with which it takes itself.

It's uncanny how the film actually portrays "jazz cabbage" as something that teens and young adults enjoy and engage in as a normal, mundane activity, rather than a shocking drug addiction. The movie completely fails in its message of demonizing weed as being somehow worse than heroin and cocaine by making it look like so much fun! Plot-wise, the movie follows a rather... Unrealistic series of events that lead to the death of the aptly named female lead: Mary, but it's easy enough to follow. The film is also surprisingly well acted for a movie made in 1936-not hammy, not overacted, but generally competently handled. There are plenty of laugh out loud ridiculous moments, and with a mere 68 minute runtime, it's never a chore to sit through. However, the most interesting thing about the film is actually the history behind it.

At the time Reefer Madness was made in 1936, the prohibition of alcohol had just ended, and "talkies" were also a fresh icon in American culture. The pearl clutchers needed a new demon to throw their collective woes at, and thus, a new prohibition was born: the Devil's Lettuce, marijuana. This nascent movement would birth much misinformation and propaganda work, a substantial amount of which would continue for decades on. Reefer Madness, however, is a gem preserved both by the ignorance of the filmmakers in a medical and business sense. It was originally financed by a church group to show to parents and their student-age children to scare them away from the Mary Jane. It was then purchased by exploitation filmmaker Dwain Esper and transformed into something else entirely, but this is not a review of his version.

Since there was no home video market in 1936, no one bothered to copyright the film, including Esper, and as such, it instantly became public domain, and has retained a cult status since the 70s, when a print of the film was purchased by Keith Stroup, who founded NORML: a marijuana advocacy group for the legalization of the funky plant. Stroup then showed the film as a joke at various marijuana festivals and colleges, and charged admission as a fundraiser for his NORML group. Thus began the legend of Reefer Madness, which has continued to be a Midnight Movie on the level of Rocky Horror ever since. "Tell Your Children" has long earned its place in the pantheon of "So Bad It's Good", and deservedly so. It might even be funnier to watch whilst under the influence.

Hot take: The Stranger is better than Citizen Kane. Welles' third feature, The Stranger, takes place in the sleepy town of Harper, Connecticut- symbolic of any rural, postwar town in America. A place where everyone knows each other, they're all related, and anyone's business is everyone's business. In this Boomer-era America, a fear pervades the nation: what if the Nazis truly aren't gone, but instead live among us? What if someone in your town was a fugitive of justice, and justice they so rightly deserve? This is the central element of The Stranger- a fear, not unlike McCarthyism of a decade later - the unease that comes with the idea that "the enemy", a propagandized, caricature of the opposing military forces, could possibly infiltrate, let alone fit in with, your small town. After all, everyone knows each other, where they came from, who they went to school with, and who they're married to, right?

The Stranger examines all of this through a macro lens- it doesn't spend very much time examining the damages to personal relationships through the revelation that a Nazi is in the townsfolk's midst; but rather, it's structured like a mystery, through the eyes of the affected in the town. We the viewer know exactly what's going on after the first few scenes: "I am here for my health, I am here for my health", and the titular "Stranger" is a moniker passed through three different individuals throughout the film, which I thought was a nice touch. It's reminiscent of how the Guilty-to-Innocent sentiment is passed along in "12 Angry Men", which may have taken influence from The Stranger.

The only issues with The Stranger are a few continuity errors with actor placement, and a few things the characters know, but shouldn't, and some places where dialogue or dramatic moments are chopped off from an inexplicable scene cut. I attribute this mostly to being from an early era of film where editing was not yet the film savior that it is today. All in all, there's a lot to like here- Welles certainly was developing his craft, and put together a movie that, if you weren't aware was a Welles film, might think was a Hitchcock instead. The Stranger is also the first film in history to use Holocaust footage within the film- something that was certainly as shocking in its day to the audience as it was to the characters in the film, as, in 1946, this was still not necessarily public knowledge to the extent it is today- certainly not in picture or video format.

7.5/10.

Equilibrium is a film that wears its influences on its sleeve- If I were to retitle the film, I'd call it Brave New Fahrenheit 1984 Matrix Giver. It heavily borrows from each of these books/films in both theme and presentation. I mean, look at the movie poster; I don't think you could copy the matrix any harder if you had an industrial bed scanner. Let it not be said that I think that borrowing influences and themes from Brave New World, 1984, The Giver, and Fahrenheit 451 is a bad thing, anything but. Equilibrium is a movie with lofty ambitions for its moral of resisting authoritarian regimes and the evils of censorship, though it can be heavy handed at times. (Did they really need a closeup on the Mona Lisa on fire for the audience to understand?)

The protagonist is Christian Bale as "the Cleric", a man much like Guy Montag crossed with Tom Cruise's character in Minority Report (which premiered the same year, and also dealt with thought crimes... an interesting coincidence), a cop who hunts down "thought criminals" who resist taking medicine that causes you to be unfeeling. The purpose of this medicine is to prevent World War 4, and within this universe, propaganda is played constantly on screens and speakers seen throughout the city, and even within the home, 1984 and 451 style. Also much like 451, the protagonist's wife falls into "sense crime" (this universe's term for thought crime- anyone who begins to feel emotion) and she is summarily executed. Later in the film, Bale's character stops taking the medicine after an encounter with a woman he's supposed to have killed (The Giver) and begins feeling himself... which leads him to mount an improbable assault on the very government of which he is a high ranking member of in order to free the population from the surveillance state and oppressive government that ironically believe they've freed the population from war and oppression through suppression of emotion and feeling (also Giver). Again, a bit hamfisted in presentation of theme, but I think knowledge of these classic novels aids in the understanding of the story, rather than undermining it.

If there's anything that Equilibrium does right, it's action. While the guards all wear black vinyl Matrix trenchcoats and black motorcycle helmets (the budget was only $20m and I'm sure most of it went to Bale and Sean Bean), Bale dishes out death via Gun-Fu in Jedi robes. Cue the Matrix scenes. Through some clever camera placement and use of darkness, there's a very effective scene early in the movie where Bale is in an entirely dark room and illuminates the rushing enemies only by muzzle flash from his guns, and their faces and body movements are briefly shown in split second flashes as the camera cuts at the pace of the gun being fired. It's better to be seen than heard described in text, but it's excellently done. The same goes for the later sword and Gun-Fu fights. John Woo would be proud.

Had it come out just 3 or 4 years earlier, Equilibrium might have been the hit that the Matrix was, appearing to thunderous applause of its grandiose themes and classic dystopian themes. Instead, it premiered just a few years late to a dull clatter as it hit the floor, was a box office flop, and then promptly forgotten because of the cheap production value by 2002 standards, and a worn out welcome of gun-fu and slow motion camera trickery that the aforementioned Matrix had collectively fatigued us of in the 90s. A watchable movie, but not one I could consider great. 6/10.

Rey beats up Kylo Ren and then and then the Rebels go BOOM and smash the First Order and then like, like, Palpatine goes SKKKKKKKKKTTTTTTT and zaps all the airplanes but Rey is too strong and she goes BZZZZTTTT with two lightsabers and then she beats him up and then she flies away in the X wing and it was so cool, and I forgot the MILLENNIUM FALCON goes ZOOM and jumps 15 times and gets away from the Empire but there's a space slug and a Burning Man Festival planet, and then and then a lady rides space horses on top of a Star Destroyer in space that was so cool and then LANDAU CALRISSIAN shows up and he acts all cool, but he's just fat and old but Finn is so cool and Poe flies so good, it was the best movie i've seen ever.

It's almost as if Morgan Freeman wanted to do another "Seven", but this was the best he could find. It's a good enough thriller that will keep you guessing, but as other reviews have said, the climax is a bit unsatisfying. It movie definitely could have used more edge to it, as certain horror elements of the plot go unused (such as all the missing feet found in a freezer). There is, however, one very good real stunt where a stuntman jumps off a cliff in the woods into a small pool of water. This is what I would call an entry level thriller, on the same tier as Enemy of the State or The Sixth Sense.

Rosalind Russell is as magical as Cary Grant is charming in this often laugh out loud romantic comedy about two motor mouth journalists who can't stand each other, but can't stand to be apart. The dialogue is a whopping 191 pages crammed into a 92 minute runtime, and I feel like I've heard two complete films worth of spoken dialogue. Great movie that holds up very well. 8/10.

It's understandable how this film came to be in the pantheon of film, especially in the science fiction and special effects departments, and truly, for a 1968 film, it is spectacular in that achievement. A full 10 years before Star Wars, this was the epic space movie.

If about 45 minutes were cut from the beginning, eliminating 30 minutes of people in monkey costumes screaming through a voice changer, and 15 or so minutes of fluff involving characters who are unimportant and never mentioned again, the film would be an easy 9/10. Once the ship begins flight to the moon, everything gains a sense of foreboding that continues to the end. HAL9000 is one of the most copied tropes in all media as the rogue AI, and the special effects are nothing short of incredible for the time it was produced.

Kristen Stewart in her best acting role ever, at 12 years old. Little did we know her riding a scooter in a Brownstone mansion in NYC would be the peak, and it would be all downhill from here. Jared Leto also didn't recover from corn rows, and Forrest Whitaker's droopy eyelid creeps me out.

Honestly, Urban Cowboy could have been biographical for anyone living in a small country town. Having grown up in the rural south myself, I know of many people who have had similar experiences and/or lived this exact lifestyle- hard working, hard partying, hard living. Sissy, Bud, Wes, and Pam are all different faces of country and country trash living. It's honestly very realistic, even in the parts that seem ridiculously overdramatized.

Grace Kelly was so lovely and charming in her day, a beauty in an era known for them, for sure. Hitchcock pulls out some great dialogue and abuses his budget to shoot in the French Riviera for 'Thief' and it makes for an effective movie, if not a particularly attention grabbing one. The costumery and setpieces are interesting enough in their own right, and some great camerawork captures the beauty of subject and scenery perfectly. A solid watch 7.25/10.

Major props to Amy Heckerling- Teen movies are generally thought of as an 80s or John Hughes thing, but Clueless can easily stand among them in its unabashedly 90s chic. Sarcasm abound, snappy dialogue, and a delectable vocabulary fill out the spoken fun, and the situational comedy of hopelessly rich affluent Beverly Hills teens is ripe for a laugh. Never gets heavy, and the editing keeps it interesting visually. Just one of those fun movies. 8/10.