Archive for the ‘Crime’ Category
Thursday, November 20th, 2025
CHRISTY is a biopic of Christy Salters, once known as Christy Martin, a pioneer of women’s professional boxing, competing from 1989-2012. It’s a very effective movie that hits some of the pleasing notes you want out of a normal sports drama, plus the additional joys of watching a woman be tough and rowdy at a time when most of society demanded she be “ladylike.” And if you know any biographical details of Salters at all you will be able to imagine a few other ways it stands out from every other boxing movie.
It’s directed by David Michôd (ANIMAL KINGDOM, THE ROVER), written by Michôd and Mirrah Foulkes (JUDY AND PUNCH), story by Katherine Fugate (THE PRINCE & ME), but all the discussion has centered on its star, Sydney Sweeney (THE MARTIAL ARTS KID). It’s another acting achievement unlocked for her – she reportedly put on 30 pounds during 3+ months of fight training so she wouldn’t have to use a stunt double. To my ignorant eyes she looks good in the ring, first with no discipline, then an evolving style. And that doesn’t necessarily seem like the hardest part of the role. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Foster, boxing, Bryan Hibbard, Chad L. Coleman, Coleman Pedigo, David Michod, Jess Gabor, Katherine Fugate, Katy O'Brian, Merritt Wever, Mirrah Foulkes, Sydney Sweeney
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Drama, Sport | 10 Comments »
Tuesday, November 18th, 2025
Today I’m looking at a pair of crime movies adapted from books by two of my favorite authors. I almost said “recent crime movies” because you know how time is, but it turns out one is more than five years old and the other is more than ten. It’s just that I put them off forever because I was afraid I was going to hate them. It turns out they’re both pretty well made movies, but yeah, I don’t think they have the spark I’m looking for.
LIFE OF CRIME (2013) is the adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s The Switch, about the time Ordell Robbie (Yasiin Bey, 16 BLOCKS) and Louis Gara (John Hawkes, NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW) kidnapped a rich guy’s wife. These are of course the characters he later returned to in Rum Punch, which was turned into JACKIE BROWN, so this has the novelty/pressure of being a sort-of prequel to a crime movie classic from a modern master, which I think most of us agree is either the best or second best Leonard adaptation ever. Good luck, writer/director Daniel Schechter (SUPPORTING CHARACTERS) living up to that.
Obviously he didn’t knock it out of the park, or you would’ve heard about it. Though I’d say it’s more on point tonally and ‘70s-period-wise than the movie of FREAKY DEAKY, it’s overall less fun. But I guess I just like this kinda stuff enough that I found it somewhat interesting. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Charles Willeford, Claes Bang, Daniel Schechter, Donald Sutherland, Elizabeth Debicki, Elmore Leonard, Isla Fisher, Jennifer Aniston, John Hawkes, Mark Boone Junior, Mick Jagger, Mos Def, Tim Robbins, Will Forte
Posted in Reviews, Crime | 4 Comments »
Monday, November 3rd, 2025
AMERICANA is an ensemble crime movie set in rural South Dakota and Wyoming, where regular, likable doofuses clash with dangerous, organized crime doofuses. It definitely falls into the category of contemporary westerns (complete with a siege), but it might also be fair to say it’s in somewhat of a ‘90s post-Tarantino indie crime movie vein. Only in a good way, I’d say. Not a copycat. It’s a good variation on a clever but unpretentious story with some violence, some laughs, a good cast playing colorful characters, and even some interesting themes running through it. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
It’s divided into parts with titles, introducing different characters, and in the second one we see a living person who died in the first chapter, so we know it can be non-linear. But that turns out to be a one time deal – part 1 is a flash forward that establishes the tone and tips us off not to worry too much about one particularly scary guy. But there will be plenty of others to look out for. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher Kriesa, Eric Dane, Halsey, Paul Walter Hauser, Simon Rex, Sydney Sweeney, Toby Huss, Tony Tost, Zahn McClarnon
Posted in Reviews, Crime | 12 Comments »
Thursday, October 9th, 2025
VILLAINS is a 2019 indie movie I’ve wondered about for a while. It uses the reliable formula “somebody tries to rob a house and discovers a horrific thing going on there.” Other ones that come to mind are THE COLLECTOR, LIVID and DON’T BREATHE. This is a much jokier take on the format than any of those, more of a dark comedy than anything, but I’d say it’s at least horror adjacent. There are maniacs doing something crazy, it takes death seriously, it stars two perhaps underrecognized greats of contemporary horror… yeah, I’ll count it as horror.
It’s about a couple of addled deadbeats named Mickey (Pennywise/Orlok/The Crow himself Bill Skarsgård) and Jules (Maika Monroe, THE GUEST, IT FOLLOWS, WATCHER, LONGLEGS) who clumsily rob their last gas station, intending to use the money to move to Florida and start a new life selling seashells. Trouble is they run out of gas on a remote, wooded road. They are not criminal masterminds.
On foot they find a large, isolated house where no one seems to be home. They break in, hoping to steal the car in the garage or come up with some other escape plan. But they face a moral dilemma when they find a young silent girl (Blake Baumgartner, MADELINE’S MADELINE) chained up in the dark basement. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Skarsgard, Black List, Dan Berk, Jeffrey Donovan, Kyra Sedgwick, Maika Monroe, Robert Olsen
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Horror | 5 Comments »
Monday, September 29th, 2025
There are a bunch of fun movies based on Elmore Leonard books – I always like seeing what bits of his style can translate properly – but there are two absolutely great ones that are among my very favorite movies. One is Steven Soderbergh’s OUT OF SIGHT, which I got up the courage to write about for its 20th anniversary in 2018, and I bet you could guess what the other one is. Quentin Tarantino’s JACKIE BROWN has been at the top of my not reviewed list* for I don’t know how many years. It’s intimidating, you know, to try to write something worthy of a movie this good that I’ve put off for that long. But recently I took a vacation to L.A. and I was able to see a midnight show of JACKIE BROWN at the New Beverly (the historic theater owned by Tarantino since 2007), so it’s time to finally do this.
Rarely has there been a more synergistic match of adapted and adapter. The small time criminals who love to talk about other stuff, the funny loser made more dangerous by his stupidity, the protagonists who aren’t following the law either but who are our guys, the very specific regional details – all these things make perfect sense for both a Leonard book and a Tarantino movie. So this becomes both an extra-Leonardy Tarantino and a Tarantino-fied Leonard. An unstoppable combination. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bridget Fonda, Chris Tucker, Elmore Leonard, Michael Bowen, Michael Keaton, Quentin Tarantino, Robert DeNiro, Robert Forster, Samuel L. Jackson
Posted in Reviews, Crime | 25 Comments »
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025
OFF LIMITS is a couple different genres – serial killer thriller, buddy-cop action, Vietnam War movie. It centers on two military police detectives, Sergeants First Class Buck McGriff (Willem Dafoe between PLATOON and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST) and Albaby Perkins (Gregory Hines between RUNNING SCARED and TAP).
It’s directed by Christopher Crowe, who was the writer of NIGHTMARES, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS and FEAR, but his only other theatrical directing gig was WHISPERS IN THE DARK. He also created a bunch of TV shows (including B.L. Stryker, B.J. and the Bear and The Watcher hosted by Sir Mix-a-Lot) and (no shit) designed the logo for Cheap Trick. I would’ve guessed it was made by more of a cinema veteran because, though I only think it’s pretty good, it has the muscular cinematistic confidence and atmosphere of A Real Fucking Movie. I mean, let me give you a few screengrabs I made to give you an idea of the fuckin vibes (TFV) in this thing:
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amanda Pays, Christopher Crowe, David Alan Grier, Fred Ward, Gregory Hines, Jack Thibeau, James Newton Howard, Keith David, Lim Kay Tong, Raymond O'Connor, Scott Glenn, Vietnam War, Willem Dafoe
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime, Thriller, War | 21 Comments »
Tuesday, September 16th, 2025
HONEY DON’T! is Margaret Qualley lesbian crime comedy #2 from Ethan Coen and his wife/editor Tricia Cooke. When the first one, DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS came out last year we learned that 1) though only Coen is credited as director he considers it a directing team 2) don’t worry, she’s a lesbian (they have an unusual marriage) 3) they can make a really funny movie even if it’s not as slick as FARGO and shit.
It took me a couple weeks to get to this one, and the reviews I saw were dire, but I figured I’d still get some laughs from it. Instead I came out honestly confused what those people were talking about. It’s not just not as bad as they say, it’s straight up a good movie. To my surprise it’s more serious than the last one, still funny and absurd but an actual neo-noir/pulp/crime type deal, like a detective novel my cool building manager two apartments ago would’ve left in the free book box in the laundry room. It has fewer big laughs than DOLLS, but by design, and I think it’s much better directed – nicer looking, more seamless in its storytelling, more interesting balance of tone. I’d have to guess that what people are rejecting is not some messiness or failure but just the shaggy quality of this style of crime story where a bunch of stuff happens by accident or coincidence and nobody fully figures out what’s going on or achieves what they’re trying to (which is, of course, part of its world view and one of the main things that’s fun about it). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Charlie Day, Chris Evans, Don Swayze, Ethan Coen, Kale Browne, Kristen Connolly, Lena Hall, Lera Abova, Talia Ryder, Tricia Cooke
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Crime | 7 Comments »
Thursday, September 11th, 2025
SOVEREIGN is a very solemn and creepy true crime movie about a doomed father and son. We know from the opening flash-forward (with what sure sounds like real 911 recordings) that they will be involved in a shootout with police. A traffic stop gone wrong, small time end-of-the-road shit, nothing spectacular, but just as final as if it was.
Most of the movie is not exactly about crime, it’s just about their lives shortly before that fateful conflict. Joe Kane (Jacob Tremblay, BEFORE I WAKE, THE TOXIC AVENGER) is a quiet, gawky teenager who doesn’t go to school. He tells police he’s home schooled, and it’s basically true; he follows a lesson plan and everything, but usually there’s no teacher. His dad Jerry (Nick Offerman, THE KINGS OF SUMMER) is away on business most of the time, putting on small seminars about debt elimination and forestalling foreclosures. He’s an expert, I guess, because they’re threatening to take his house away but he refuses to accept any communications about it and spews all kinds of arcane (what he considers) facts about why they can’t do that. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christian Swegal, Dennis Quaid, Jacob Tremblay, Kezia DaCosta, Martha Plimpton, Nancy Travis, Nick Offerman, sovereign citizens, Thomas Mann, true crime
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Drama | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, August 27th, 2025
EENIE MEANIE is a crime movie that went straight to Hulu last week. It stars Samara Weaving (MONSTER TRUCKS, THE BABYSITTER, READY OR NOT, AZRAEL) and I like that lady so I watched it.
Weaving plays Edith Meaney. The title is a cute nickname a bad person gave her – she prefers Edie. Orphaned by her dad (Steve Zahn, WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES) going to prison, she somehow fell into being a teenage getaway driver for grown up criminals. Many years later she’s away from that world, going to school – even got a job at a bank! – until, you know, an inciting incident.
It’s triggered by her bank being robbed, but it really has nothing to do with that. She ends up in the hospital, where a blood test finds that she’s pregnant. Against her better judgment she decides to go find the father, her ex-boyfriend John (Karl Glusman, THE NEON DEMON, THE BIKERIDERS), and let him know. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andy Garcia, car chases, Cleveland, Dean Winters, Jermaine Fowler, Karl Glusman, Kyanna Simone, Marshawn Lynch, Randall Park, Samara Weaving, Shawn Simmons, Steve Zahn
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime | 10 Comments »
Tuesday, August 26th, 2025
August 12, 2005
I reviewed John Singleton’s FOUR BROTHERS twenty years ago and hopefully I’ll have a few new things to say about it, but the sad truth is my verdict has not changed. This is a movie that starts off with a real good hook and then doesn’t do enough with it. It’s thoroughly okay.
The screenplay is by David Elliot (THE WATCHER) & Paul Lovett, the team who later did G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA, and the hook is that an old lady named Evelyn Mercer (Fionnula Flanagan, THE EWOK ADVENTURE) is in a convenience store in Highland Park, Michigan when it gets robbed, and ends up shot to death. It turns out she was a beloved member of the community who helped hundreds of troubled kids find foster homes. But there were four kids so bad nobody would take them, and she adopted them herself. So her funeral brings all four brothers back home, they get to talking, and decide to go find out who did this. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andre Benjamin, Barry Shabaka Henley, David Arnold, David Elliot, Fionnula Flanagan, Garrett Hedlund, John Singleton, Josh Charles, Mark Wahlberg, Paul Lovett, Sofia Vergara, Taraji P. Henson, Terrence Howard, Tyrese
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime, Mystery | 18 Comments »
