This year, for the first (and last?) time ever, I was invited to take part in the 2012 Village Voice Film Poll, a survey of 85 critics about the best movies and performances and shit of the year. Hopefully I did not bring too much shame or dishonor upon the institution. My lowbrow tastes did not seem to affect the final tally too much, but it is funny to see that me and one other critic caused John Hyams to be tied with Ang Lee, Bela Tarr & Agnes Hranitzky, Jafar Panahi, Richard Linklater, Steven Spielberg and Ben Affleck for 6th place in the Best Director category.
I struggled with alot of my answers, especially in the actress categories, since I clearly haven’t seen enough movies with good roles for women. I mean, I love Rachel Weisz, but you guys know which movie called DEEP BLUE SEA I’ve seen, and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t in it. I’m kind of embarrassed of some of those votes. I feel pretty good about honoring Jessica Biel for THE TALL MAN, though, and definitely Salma Hayek for SAVAGES. I’m not taking that one back. One category where I thought I would agree with the consensus was Daniel Day Lewis for best actor (he played Lincoln), but he ended up #3. #1 went to Joaquin (Popeye), who was my second place vote. (read the rest of this shit…)
The first sequel to THE LEGEND OF (cough cough) CHARLEY is the best of the series in my opinion. It takes place after the Civil War, so Charley is no longer a runaway slave, but he still has to deal with racists, including a former Confederate colonel who still leads his troop of assholes on violent rampages in black settlements.
I’ve been curious about this series of Fred Williamson slavery-era westerns, and with 
This is gonna be an awkward conversation starter, but, uh… anybody here seen MANDINGO? It’s a deeply uncomfortable, ugly movie, not just in showing horrible things, but in making us follow main characters who don’t see anything wrong here. Directed by Richard Fleischer (20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, MR. MAJESTYK, CONAN THE DESTROYER) and written by mentally ill two-time Academy Award nominee Norman Wexler, it was maybe intended as a prestige picture but received as trash and exploitation. I don’t care which it is but I do think it’s pretty brilliant, even STARSHIP TROOPERSy, in the way it confronts racism, so I thought it would be worth discussing before DJANGO UNCHAINED comes out.
MAXIMUM CONVICTION is one of these powerful action team ups we get now in a post-EXPENDABLES world. Second-billed Steve Austin is probly the most reliable DTV guy after Scott Adkins, with a bunch of pretty good ones under his belt (
William Kaufman is one of the elite few DTV directors whose names I remember in a positive way. So far he’s not an identifiable master of a style like Hyams or Florentine, and doesn’t have as many under his belt as Roel Reine, but he’s done enough that I keep an eye out. 
I have to thank you guys, because I only watched this because it was rated #1 in the 
I really thought it was a sure thing. Andrew Dominik, director of CHOPPER and THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD: THE MOTION PICTURE, doing another crime movie, this time based on the book Cogan’s Trade by George V. Higgins. I haven’t read it but I loved a different one by him, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, a book about small time hoods that’s made up mostly of long conversations, sometimes going for long stretches without any description, but never getting boring. And also made into 
Hey fellas, you know how you like comic strips and all that? And you know how you are also a huge fan of Lance Henriksen from ALIENS, STONE COLD, HARD TARGET, THE QUICK AND THE DEAD, PISTOL WHIPPED, the TV show Millennium, and others? Well that’s interesting because Joseph Maddrey, co-writer of the Henriksen autobiography 
I saw KILLING THEM SOFTLY today and I’m working on the review right now, and that made me realize that when I finally caught up with the director’s previous movie earlier in the year I didn’t ever post a review of it. But it turns out I did write some stuff in my notebook, so I dug that up and I don’t mean to brag but I am a pretty good typist so here is a quickie review for you, friends.
