THE HIT LIST is a DTV suspense thriller with a great, almost Larry Cohen type premise: 2 drunk guys in a bar commiserate over their shitty days; one claims to be a hitman, the other plays along and writes down on a napkin the five people he’d like dead. And then of course, in the hung over haze of the next morning, he finds out that #5 on the list, the boss that passed him over for a promotion, has been assassinated. Oh shit. So he has to put the kibosh on this thing, if not immediately then at least before the motherfucker gets to #1 on the list. I mean yeah, he caught her cheating, but he doesn’t want his wife dead. They haven’t even tried counseling. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Cuba Gooding Jr.’
The Hit List
Monday, November 14th, 2011
Pearl Harbor
Sunday, June 12th, 2011
chapter 4
released May 25th, 2001
WARNING: contains spoilers for PEARL HARBOR and World War II
After three financially successful action movies in a row (BAD BOYS, THE ROCK, ARMAGEDDON), Michael Bay got a once-in-his-career itch to make An Important Movie. He probly had SAVING PRIVATE RYAN on the brain, and definitely TITANIC.
Ever since James Cameron’s movie broke all box office records studios had been threatening to make asses of themselves by blatantly trying to catch more lightning in that same melodramatic-love-story-during-historic-disaster bottle. Jan de Bont almost did a love-story-on-the-Hindenburg movie, for example. PEARL HARBOR wasn’t as obvious of a copycat as that because 1) it was a love story set against a war movie as much as a disaster and 2) the love song on the end credits was by Faith Hill instead of Celine Dion. Totally different.
(more…)
Shadowboxer
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
I never heard of Lee Daniels before he got a best director nomination for PRECIOUS, BASED ON etc. Turns out PRECIOUS… is his third movie as a director, SHADOWBOXER is his first, and Kent M. Beeson insisted in the comments that I had to see it.
I’ve seen a few interviews and things with Daniels, and he seems like a nice, normal guy. Based on these movies alone, though, you’d have to assume the motherfucker is nuts.
SHADOWBOXER is a very serious crime drama. It has some colorful characters and intense violence, but it’s not an action movie at all. It’s focused on the characters, and with its lush colors, weakness for soft lighting and classical music it’s a similar style to PRECIOUS. It’s the story of a male-female team of assassins who, when hired to take out a crime boss’s pregnant wife (Vanessa Ferlito from DEATH PROOF) decide instead to deliver the baby and take mother and child into hiding.
The two killers have a strong attachment, they take care of each other, and they are lovers. And, uh, they’re played by Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Helen Mirren. Hahem. (more…)
