[4] Humphrey Bogart defends a juvenile delinquent (John Derek) in this uneven and heavy-handed flick from director Nicholas Ray. Didn’t care for Derek in this movie, but Bogey makes a nice courtroom stand at the end. The best thing about this movie is that it probably inspired Ray to continue exploring similar themes in his later, greater Rebel Without a Cause. With George Macready.
[6] Ryan Gosling plays a young prosecutor pitted against slicker-than-snot Anthony Hopkins, representing himself in a trial where he’s accused of murdering his wife. Hopkins is about to get away with everything, but Gosling is determined to poke a hole in Hopkins’ seemingly air-tight alibi. The casting is safe and predictable, but the script is fairly tight and twisty, and kept me engaged to the end. With …
[6] Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara star in the second adaptation of the Stieg Larsson novel about a journalist and a computer hacker who work to solve the mystery of a missing woman. Is there perhaps something wrong with the fact that The Social Network is more exciting than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? People looking at computer monitors and holding board meetings shouldn’t be …
[7] Elijah Wood and Charlie Hunnam star in this story about a wrongfully-expelled college student who falls into the dangerous British subculture of football ‘hooliganism’. The closest thing we have in America are street gangs, but the British ‘hooligans’ are a little more organized and revolve around football (soccer in America). Wood plays the disenfranchised student while Hunnam plays a higher up in the Green Street Elite …
[8] Ryan Gosling channels his inner Eastwood in this stylish thriller about a Hollywood stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver. The combination of Hossein Amini’s emotionally restrained script and Nicolas Winding Refn’s visceral direction are a winning combination, boosted tremendously by Newton Thomas Sigel’s crisp, colorful cinematography and Cliff Martinez’s minimalist, evocative score. Gosling’s screen presence can never be disputed after this film. Like …
[8] Looper is a mash-up of mobster movie and sci-fi time travel flick, but rather than getting caught up in its own clever twists on a (let’s face it) hackneyed sci-fi sub-genre, the movie is wisely more concerned with creating an emotionally gripping story. It moves and builds perfectly, dividing your empathy for its fully-fleshed characters in a story that shuns black and white to …
[6] This light-hearted murder mystery isn’t likely to stick in your memory, but should satisfy Errol Flynn fans well enough. Flynn plays an author who writes under a secret identity — so secret even his wife and mother don’t realize it is he who is responsible for a scandalous novel that has recently put polite society up in arms. As life imitates art, Flynn finds …
[6] Barbara Stanwyck shows up at Errol Flynn’s doorstep claiming to be the wife of his late brother. While he suspects she is a gold digger, she suspects he is abusing his young niece (Geraldine Brooks) and may be hiding an even greater secret. The film throws in a few too many red herrings, but I like that it keeps the characters’ motives and allegiances …
[7] This film and Top Gun are the ones that really launched the Simpson/Bruckheimer brand of action/comedy that would dominate the box office through the late 80s and 90s. (Even after Simpson’s death in ’96, Bruckheimer is still a top name in action today.) Whether that’s a good or bad thing, I won’t get into. I’ll just say that at least it was a fresh …
[8] The Coen Brothers broke onto the film scene with this claustrophobic mystery/thriller featuring Frances McDormand, John Getz, and Dan Hedaya in a murderous love triangle. M. Emmet Walsh complicates matters for all of them as a hitman for hire. The concept is simple, but mined for every ounce it’s worth — just how hard is it to kill someone? Everything you love about the …
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