[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 …
[5] Paul Newman returns as private eye Lew Harper, hired by an ex-flame to solve a blackmail case involving adultery and oil-rich land. As with the previous Harper film, the stakes are never high enough and no one’s quite worth caring about. The film is good for one suspenseful set piece involving a flooding room (hence the title?), but it’s a pretty sleepy movie otherwise. …
[5] Visually striking but emotionally hollow, Warren Beatty’s film version of Chester Gould’s comic creation is an underwhelming would-be blockbuster. The only character you can get invested in is Madonna’s Breathless Mahoney. Everyone else, including our strong-jawed hero, is as two-dimensional as the comic strip they came from. It’s kinda fun to spot well-known actors in cameos throughout the movie — keep your eyes peeled …
[6] Five ladies of ill repute muster the courage to take the stand against their evil nightclub boss in this Bette Davis vehicle. Davis overacts a tad (doesn’t she always?), but Humphrey Bogart is reliable in the role of the tenacious district attorney. This is an instance where I’d love to have seen some of the off-screen action, but the film works remarkably well under …
[6] On one hand, Arthur Penn’s take on Billy the Kid isn’t as whitewashed as other tellings. On the other hand, why should we care that some hot-headed simpleton ran out and got himself shot? Despite an admirable effort from Paul Newman, I couldn’t quite invest in the character as much as I’d have liked, but the movie still moves at a brisk pace and …
Copyright © 2025 | Theme by MH Themes