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…)
I swear for weeks I knew Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore were getting acclaim for a movie called MAY DECEMBER, and I assumed it was about them falling in love. I was pretty thrown off when I learned it was in fact a story inspired by Mary Kay Letourneau, a teacher who in the late ‘90s went to prison for second-degree child rape of one of her sixth grade students, insisted he was her soulmate, gave birth to two of his daughters while incarcerated, then got out and had a 14 year marriage with him. It’s an infamous story worldwide, but especially in the Seattle area, since it happened here. It brings out all the dumb radio call-in show takes about “heh heh, that’s what most boys want ‘Hot For Teacher,’ right?” but of course it is complicated by his choice to stay with her after he became an adult.
As we’re all aware, this has been a hell of a year for the box office, with hits like BAD BOYS FOR LIFE, 
