[7] At first, Spring Breakers seems like a beautiful excuse for gratuitous boobage, but as it unfolds, I found myself more and more engaged with Harmony Korine’s (Gummo, Trash Humpers) story of four restless college girls who flirt with darkness and wrestle with the consequences. Darkness ultimately arrives in the form of James Franco, playing a silver-toothed rapper/drug dealer who bails the girls out of …
[7] Cold in July is hard to summarize, and that’s a big part of why it’s interesting. It starts off with a bang, as Michael C. Hall (TV’s Dexter) is forced to protect his home from an intruder. No sooner than the blood is off the walls, Hall’s character learns the deceased was the son of an ex-con out for vengeance, played by Sam Shepard. …
[7] Jamie Foxx stars as an L.A. cab driver forced to chauffeur a hitman played by Tom Cruise. Director Michael Mann (Heat, Last of the Mohicans) works from a solid script by Stuart Beattie that balances action and suspense with plenty of great character moments. The film builds nicely, with Foxx’s character instigating a few surprising turns of events. Cruise’s character is the icy, heartless …
[3] Mel Gibson plays a drug dealer trying to come clean. Kurt Russell plays a cop assigned to bring Mel down. Trouble is, they’re kinda friends. And now they’re both sort of in love with the same woman, a restaurant owner played by Michelle Pfeiffer. All three leading actors are beautiful to look at, especially in Conrad Hall’s Oscar-nominated cinematography. But writer/director Robert Towne’s script …
[8] Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a morally bankrupt ambulance chaser who sells gruesome crime video to L.A. television stations. First-time writer/director Dan Gilroy paints an interesting portrait of a disturbed man who may reflect our times more accurately than we’re ready to acknowledge. Nightcrawler shows its hand pretty early on, but Gyllenhaal and co-star Rene Russo, playing a cutthroat TV news producer, keep you engrossed …
[7] An ex-con and his wife are on the lam after a heist goes bad in this flick from Sam Peckinpah (Straw Dogs, The Wild Bunch). Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw star as the central couple. She has to sleep with supporting baddie Ben Johnson to get McQueen’s character released from prison, and when McQueen finds out about it at the movie’s mid-point, it makes …
[8] Paul Verhoeven (RoboCop, Soldier of Orange) directs this sexually super-charged Hitchcockian thriller about a San Francisco detective (Michael Douglas) investigating a seductive writer (Sharon Stone) about a murder case that plays out similar to one of her novels. As he digs deeper, he discovers more and more reason to believe she is indeed the killer, and that his own life may be in danger. …
[7] Eddie Murphy made his big screen debut opposite Nick Nolte in this action-comedy from director Walter Hill (The Warriors, Southern Comfort). Nolte plays a cop who begrudgingly seeks the help of Murphy’s character, a thief serving the last few months of his jail time. Together they try to track down a killer (Dexter‘s James Remar), and gosh darn if they don’t start to become …
[6] Steve McQueen stars as a San Francisco cop charged with protecting a mobster who is about to squeal for a US senator. When the witness is killed, McQueen works around the clock to discern the identity of the killers before the senator has his head. First off, I have to say that was one of the hardest synopses I’ve ever done. Bullitt is a …
[6] Michael Fassbender stars as a lawyer who reaps the whirlwind when he tangles with drug lords in this Ridley Scott film penned by author Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy’s screenplay will test the patience of many. It contains an abundance of two-person dialogue scenes — one after the other for the entire first half of the film. All the action, tension, and dramatic high points are …
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