Archive for the ‘Crime’ Category
Thursday, September 16th, 2021
THE CARD COUNTER is the new one from writer/director Paul Schrader, with Oscar Isaac (THE BOURNE LEGACY) taking his turn as the Schraderian anti-hero. Like so many of these characters, William Tell (as he calls himself) is a troubled man with an unusual and lonely lifestyle, who narrates his story in the form of diary entries, telling us about his normal routine before things go horribly wrong.
In some ways he hearkens back to (non-narrating, from what I remember) Richard Gere in AMERICAN GIGOLO, because he’s handsome, and neatly dressed and coifed. On the surface he seems charismatic and sociable, especially compared to most of the other people in his circle as a professional gambler.
Like the title says, he can count cards. He explains the concept of it – keeping track of the cards being played to calculate his odds, saving larger bets for when they lean in his favor. He explains how he travels around to different casinos, telling us his strategies for different games, and his philosophy of making enough money to keep going but not enough to get the casinos after him. I’m not a cards guy or a gambling guy so I don’t really give a shit if some of it is wrong (as I read some claim). I’m happy to accept that he knows what he’s talking about, and I can follow enough of it to get by. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bobby C. King, gambling, Oscar Isaac, Paul Schrader, Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan, Willem Dafoe
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews | 14 Comments »
Tuesday, September 14th, 2021
DISCO 9000 – or FASS BLACK as it’s called on the Xenon Entertainment VHS tape I rented – is a 1977 movie about a super big shot who runs a record label and dance club in the top of a 26 story building on the Sunset Strip. It’s the second of two movies directed by the actor D’Urville Martin (GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER, ROSEMARY’S BABY, BLACK CAESAR) – the first one was DOLEMITE. So yes, he’s the guy Wesley Snipes played in DOLEMITE IS MY NAME.
Fass Black is the name of said big shot, played with distinct swagger by John Poole, whose only other role was as “Record Executive” in the Philip Michael Thomas movie DEATH DRUG (1978). He also has story and wardrobe credits on this. And wardrobe credit is big because that’s about half of the character. One notable thing about this movie is that he wears white-framed sunglasses more often than he doesn’t. It went long enough without showing his eyes at the beginning that I was convinced it was gonna be a DREDD thing where he never takes them off. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: D'Urville Martin, disco, Harold Daniels, Jeannie Bell, Johnnie Taylor, Matthew "Stymie" Beard, Roland S. Jefferson M.D.
Posted in Crime, Music, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Monday, September 13th, 2021
WRATH OF MAN is a pretty different type of Guy Ritchie movie. It certainly shows some of his interests, his directorial chops, and his long relationship with filming Jason Statham. And okay, it also has some of that lightning quick snappy banter between the fellas, some of which I couldn’t follow at all. And it has Josh Hartnett playing a character called “Boy Sweat Dave.” I’m not sure I can picture that being in somebody else’s movie. Guy Ritchie is the Boy Sweat Dave type.
And yet this is a different style (a more calm and controlled type of flashy) and tone (less flippant, more foreboding, and even mythical) than what we expect from him. It doesn’t have freeze frames with character’s names as they’re introduced, but it does have four sections with pretentious chapter titles. A trend I very much approve of.
It’s a remake of a 2004 French film called LE CONVOYEUR (or CASH TRUCK), which I could only find on VHS with no subtitles (update: I got to see it on a Region B blu-ray so here’s my review). But this seems to me like it’s playing off of two American traditions: pulp crime novels, and movies that try to be like HEAT. I can enjoy both. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Eddie Marsan, Eli Brown, Guy Ritchie, heists, Holt McCallany, Jason Statham, Jeffrey Donovan, Josh Hartnett, remakes, Scott Eastwood
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews | 16 Comments »
Monday, August 16th, 2021
I watched WALKING THE EDGE because it came out on blu-ray from Fun City Editions – who seem to have an eye for ‘80s urban crime movies with a bit of an arty edge – and because it stars Robert Forster. I had just enjoyed him in ALLIGATOR, which is a much better movie to me, but it almost doesn’t matter. This is another one that for all its good qualities is about 85% running on the fuel of Forster’s charisma and acting choices.
It’s a simple story. He plays put-upon L.A. cab driver Jason Walk, who reluctantly picks up a fare one day (the cab is kind of a front – he really working for a mobster called “the Fat Man” [Bernard Erhard, voice of Cy-Kill on GoBots] and tries to avoid actual work), not knowing she’s on a revenge spree. At her first stop Christine (Nancy Kwan, THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG) splatters a guy’s chunky blood across a window while Jason sits in the cab obliviously grooving out to jazz. At the second stop he sees her get in a shootout with some guys at a garage and while the two of them are driving away yelling at each other he realizes she’s been injured (not from a bullet – from a hubcap thrown at her like a Frisbee!), feels bad and brings her to hide out at his apartment. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A Martinez, Aarika Wells, Bernard Erhard, Frankie Hill, Fun City Editions, Ivy Bethune, Jacqueline Giroux, James McIntire, Jay Chattaway, Jerry Jones, Joe Spinell, Nancy Kwan, Norbert Meisel, Phil H. Fravel, Robert Forster, Wayne Woodson
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, July 27th, 2021
July 26, 1991
Kathleen Turner is… V.I. WARSHAWSKI, a Chicago private detective who falls into a case when an ex hockey player she picks up at a bar dies in a suspicious explosion during an inheritance squabble. The movie was a notorious flop, making back less than half its $24 million budget, and Rotten Tomatoes calculates its reviews at 21% (though Roger Ebert and Janet Maslin liked it). But I’ve wanted to see it for a long time, at least since realizing it was a character from a series of novels. I haven’t read the books, but maybe that helps, because movies never seem to be able to capture these characters the way fans want them to (see: Parker, Jack Reacher, Matthew Scudder… I guess people like Jason Bourne and Lisbeth Salander?) and yet, when you don’t know any better, they make for fun movie material.
The novels are by author Sara Paretsky – the movie credits the whole series as its basis, but apparently it’s mainly from the second one, Deadlock. Though the author and character are noted feminists, Hollywood Pictures got three dudes to write the screenplay – Edward Taylor (no other movie credits), David Aaron Cohen (POINT OF VIEW starring John Savage) and Nick Thiel (Eight Is Enough, The Fall Guy, Magnum P.I., THE EXPERTS, FIREBIRDS, WHITE FANG). Actually, director Jeff Kanew says on the commentary track of the blu-ray and dvd from Kino-Lorber that he never met Thiel and didn’t use any of his work but that another guy who wasn’t credited did to a bunch of work. Anyway he’s a dude also, the one who did EDDIE MACON’S RUN, GOTCHA!, REVENGE OF THE NERDS, TOUGH GUYS and TROOP BEVERLY HILLS. They have one of those “hey, check this out” boxes around his name on the movie poster, so I guess that resume held some cachet in ’91. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angela Goethals, character from a series of books, Charles Durning, Charles McCaughan, Chicago, David Aaron Cohen, Frederick Coffin, Jay O. Sanders, Jeff Kanew, Kathleen Turner, Lynnie Godfrey, Nancy Paul, Nick Thiel, Randy Edelman, Sara Paretsky, Stephen Meadows, Stephen Root, Summer of 1991, Wayne Knight
Posted in Reviews, Crime | 25 Comments »
Monday, July 26th, 2021
July 26, 1991
MOBSTERS. Guys who are in mobs. Young ones. Famous ones. Doing mob stuff. What more do you need? According to rookie director Michael Karbelnikoff, story provider Michael Mahern and screenwriter Nicholas Kazan (FRANCES, AT CLOSE RANGE, PATTY HEARST, REVERSAL OF FORTUNE), “What? What do you mean?”
I have to tell you, I really struggled to get through this one, and considered turning it off and not reviewing it. Keep in mind that I already made it through MANNEQUIN: ON THE MOVE, SUBURBAN COMMANDO and PROBLEM CHILD 1 & 2 for this series. This is a much classier production than any of those, with all the period costumes and nice cinematography by Lajos Koltai (István Szabó’s MEPHISTO, WHITE PALACE) – there are some nice looking, atmospheric scenes, like an eerie outdoor shootout in the fog. But it’s empty and soul-less and boring as shit and not in an interesting way at all. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andy Romano, Anthony Quinn, Chris Penn, Christian Slater, Costas Mandylor, F. Murray Abraham, mafia, Michael Gambon, Nicholas Kazan, Nicholas Sadler, Patrick Dempsey, Richard Grieco, Robert Z'Dar, Rodney Eastman, Seymour Cassel, Summer of 1991, Titus Welliver
Posted in Reviews, Crime | 22 Comments »
Wednesday, July 14th, 2021
THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD is a movie I was highly anticipating ever since I first read it was in the works. When it finally came out as one of these pandemic same-day-on-HBO-Max releases and it turned out it wasn’t quite the A+ movie I was hoping for, it kind of entered and left my consciousness without much incident. But I did think it was a cool movie taken on its own terms, and worthy of documentation with a review. And then it started to seem better the more I wrote about it.
Reasons I had high hopes:
1. It’s directed and co-written by Taylor Sheridan, who previously directed WIND RIVER and wrote SICARIO, HELL OR HIGH WATER and WITHOUT REMORSE. I just really like his style of quasi-realistic, contemporary-western-ish crime/action with tough, broody characters and a heightened atmosphere of doom.
2. It stars Angelina Jolie, who we don’t see in too many movies these days, but who I believe has an advanced understanding of badass screen presence. I base this partly on WANTED, a ridiculous movie I don’t necessarily love, but that she really stood out in. I always remember reading that she took the script and crossed out a bunch of her dialogue that she didn’t feel she needed, and said that Clint Eastwood taught her to do that. That really seemed to work for her there.
3. Also because I read the cool-sounding premise: a national park fire fighter on lookout duty helps a kid escape from assassins during a forest fire. Is this gonna be pretentious FIRESTORM? Starring an Oscar-winning actress instead of an NFL player? I can dig that! (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aidan Gillen, Angelina Jolie, Finn Little, forest fire, Jake Weber, Jon Bernthal, Medina Senghore, Nicholas Hoult, Tory Kittles, Tyler Perry, Tyler Sheridan
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 42 Comments »
Monday, July 12th, 2021
July 12, 1991
Hot on the heels of James Cameron’s TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY came the other most important action movie of summer ’91, Kathryn Bigelow’s POINT BREAK. Cameron was famously married to Bigelow at the time, and is credited as executive producer, and the film has parallels to his in its technical perfection and intensity of action. The pair had reworked an original script called JOHNNY UTAH by W. Peter Iliff (PRAYER OF THE ROLLERBOYS), co-story credit to Rick King (director of PRAYER OF THE ROLLERBOYS), with Cameron doing a last minute pass to improve the action scenes before immediately shifting to T2. “She basically is 100% responsible for the final film from that point on,” Cameron reportedly said at a convention in ’91. And clearly it’s Bigelow’s combination of impeccable craft and counterintuitive artistic choices that made POINT BREAK a hit, then a cult favorite, then an enduring classic.
The choice that seemed crazy at the time, and prophetic now, was her insistence on casting Keanu Reeves as the college football legend turned overachieving FBI rookie Johnny Utah. By all accounts Bigelow had to fight for Reeves, because producers wanted someone else. That’s understandable – he’d been in the dark indie thriller RIVER’S EDGE and the period piece DANGEROUS LIAISONS, but was best known to the world as Ted from BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, with whom he inescapably shared a lovable stoner airhead sounding voice. On the other hand, when the movie was almost made by Ridley Scott a few years earlier he’d had Matthew Broderick in the role. You’re telling me that made more sense!? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Kiedis, Christopher Pettiet, Daniel Beer, Donald Peterman, Gary Busey, Howard E. Smith, James Cameron, John C. McGinley, Julian Reyes, Julie Michaels, Kathryn Bigelow, Keanu Reeves, Lee Tergesen, Lori Petty, Patrick Swayze, Rick King, Summer of 1991, Tom Sizemore, Vincent Klyn, W. Peter Iliff
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime | 31 Comments »
Tuesday, June 15th, 2021
STRAIGHT OUT OF BROOKLYN was a little $450,000 movie that The Samuel Goldwyn Company released on 5 screens over Memorial Day weekend, 1991. Some time after that it expanded up to 75 screens, and it made $2.7 million dollars on that small budget. Roger Ebert reviewed it on June 28th (he liked it).
You will not not notice how low that budget is. At its slickest, STRAIGHT OUT OF BROOKLYN seems like an early ‘80s TV movie, as the saccharine orchestral score by Harold Wheeler (arranger and producer, Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk by Meco) plays over dark, grainy establishing shots of New York City buildings.
At its cheesiest it looks like a filmed community college play, with straight-on shots of family drama at a dinner table or a man looking in a mirror giving a long monologue to a white man he argued with at the gas station earlier.
At its best, though, it’s a time capsule of the Red Hook housing projects, where the director grew up, and of an exciting young actor giving a great first performance, even if he’s saying pretty on-the-nose stuff about The American Dream and shit as he points accusingly to the Manhattan skyline.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: George T. Odom, Lawrence Gilliard Jr., Matty Rich, Summer of 1991
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Drama | 4 Comments »
Thursday, May 27th, 2021
“Certainly I am a lot to blame for the film but I can’t say the alchemy of it was well balanced. What I have always said about my participation in action films in general is that I like to cut the head off of a rhinoceros and put a giraffe’s head on it. For some people, a rhinoceros with a giraffe’s head on it is interesting and something to look at. ‘Wow, you don’t see that every day!’ Other people will say ‘That is wrong! That is an abomination against nature! Kill it now! Get it out of my sight!’”
—HUDSON HAWK screenwriter Daniel Waters to Money Into Light, 2016
May 24, 1991. Yes, THELMA & LOUISE, BACKDRAFT and HUDSON HAWK were all released on the same day. (Also ONLY THE LONELY and WILD HEARTS CAN’T BE BROKEN.) And cinema was never the same.
I reviewed HUDSON HAWK 11 years ago, and I stand by that review. There are many things about the movie that don’t work, but none of them overshadow how much it makes me laugh or how much I enjoy seeing, as the quote above puts it, “a rhinoceros with a giraffe’s head on it.” So read that review if you’d like to hear more detail, including my theory about its flop status being partly caused by Eddie “Hudson” Hawk being in many ways the opposite of John McClane. But this is so much the type of movie I love to look at in a summer retrospective – an attempted blockbuster, using star power and production value to try to draw normal people into something kinda weird – that I felt I should rewatch it and add further thoughts in the context of the other 1991 releases. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andie MacDowell, Bruce, Bruce Willis, Daniel Waters, Danny Aiello, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Lehmann, Richard E. Grant, Sandra Bernhard, Steven E. de Souza, Summer of 1991
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Crime | 62 Comments »
