SHOWDOWN AT THE GRAND is a little indie movie with a premise and setting that are right up my alley. It’s sort of like MATINEE for people fixated on the movies of the ‘70s and ‘80s instead of ’50s and ‘60s. To me it doesn’t really build much from there, but it uses two top shelf actors in novel ways, applies elbow grease to areas where I didn’t expect it to, and has an overall enthusiasm that makes it worth recommending.
Dolph Lundgren (JOHNNY MNEMONIC) is in this movie, and that’s obviously what brought my eye to it, but the star is Terrence Howard (HUSTLE & FLOW), who plays George Fuller, owner of an old time one screen theater called the Warner Grand. He’s a larger-than-life figure who dresses like a cowboy and lovingly lectures everyone he sees about the supposed greats of forgotten exploitation movie history, making it sound like a religious sermon. Showing movies is his life, and maybe his home – if he has a house or apartment outside of the Grand we never see it. (read the rest of this shit…)
John Frankenheimer’s RONIN is a movie that kicked my ass in a multiplex in the year 1998 A.D. The thing that really stuck in my head about it was the car chases, of course – specifically the one where they end up going the wrong way in a tunnel. But I also remembered it being very tough and smart, I was pretty confident it would hold up, and man was I right. This is a ’90s classic. But timeless.
Seeing 
I’m a fan of the Academy Award winning screenwriter Diablo Cody. I enjoyed 
DESIERTO is a straight ahead chased-by-a-sniper thriller that I know at least one person has encouraged me to review, but I couldn’t find who. Thanks for the recommendation, whoever it was. I remembered it after watching 
As you can see in my reviews of 
For those who came in late: Yesterday I wanted to watch a movie from Palestine, and I picked 
Right now, maybe even more than usual, there’s a horrible tragedy going on in the world. It’s painful to dwell on, but I can’t ignore it. I feel with every cell in my body that what Israeli soldiers and American weapons are doing to human beings in Gaza right now is unjustifiable in any context, with any history. But I also know that nothing I do or write can change anything about it. And I’m not trying to start a debate. That doesn’t help anybody. So I can only try to keep doing what I do in a way I feel is constructive.
Hey, you know Greta Gerwig, director of last year’s biggest movie, 
SUITABLE FLESH is the latest from Joe Lynch, a director who has a certain credibility in my book because his debut was a DTV sequel. I was mixed-positive on 
