OFF THE SHELF – Issue # 12: UNDER-RATED GEMS
Hello and welcome to the latest issue of Off The Shelf. This is the one in which our intrepid over-worked-bitten-off-more-then-he-can-chew
-but-likes-working-against-the-odds-John-McClane-style hero refers to a Joel Schmuacher film as “…a thrilling yet also darkly comic ride for the American everyman through the decaying urban jungle of everyday life…” , accuses Andy Garcia’s son of faking cancer to get out of going to school, uses the term “rootin’, tootin’” in a firmly non-ironic sense and tries to give justification as to why, over the coming months, a certain Joe Pesci comedy, discussed within this issue, will be getting promoted to the Modern Classics section of his DVD collection.
Yes – God help us all, indeed!
Anyway, sorry for the delay in getting this issue published (is there a delay? Am I just being paranoid? I’m convinced that this column is ‘weekly’ and I only put the previous one up last Saturday – I’m going insane, seriously!) but it’s here now and, apologies in advance, it’s another ‘gi-norm-e-ma-hoosive’ issue that 80% of you won’t read, 10% of you will only just scroll through to see if there’s any titles you actually care about but find none and 10% of you will actually read in its entirety and take the time to reply to in the ATBs.
So this week, as the headline of the issue suggests, I’m giving you a guided tour through the titles in my DVD collection that make up the sub-section marked ‘Under-Rated Gems’. This is quite an open-to-interpretation category. My criteria for titles ending up here is that they either never found an audience for a multitude of reasons, they were critically-mauled when they didn’t deserve to be, seen but unloved by an audience when they deserved better and, in some cases (especially a certain Zack Snyder film about zombies), they were seen and loved to only a certain extent and for all the wrong reasons when they deserved much better also.
All in all, these are films that I’m recommending that you – my fellow Filmrotters – seek out and view if you haven’t already, seek out and reappraise if you’ve seen and previously disliked or seek out and revisit/embrace if you’ve not seen the film in a long time ago. Every issue I try and write from a different perspective and challenge myself in different ways. We’ve had the issue where I tried to sell you the films by only talking about their stand-out scenes, then there was the one where I gave myself a 100 word limit on each title. Now? Well, I’m going to keep it simple and address each film with a “YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE…” banner.
As always, your views are both wanted and expected in the ATBs below. Remember though, these are films that I own so don’t flame me for what you consider as “missing titles” – just recommend them to me. Furthermore, if you think that a film I’ve included in this section deserves promoted to the status of Modern Classic or Near Perfection, or even demoted to the likes of Pure Escapist Fun or Guilty Pleasure, then by all means state your case and I’ll take great delight in reading it, even giving due consideration to it.
In the meantime, and without further ado, here’s my Under-Rated Gems on DVD:
Antwone Fisher
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a really strong and accomplished directorial debut by Denzel Washington, Derek Luke shines brightly in the lead role as the troubled sailor sent to see a naval psychiatrist (Washington) because of his volatile temper and because it balances superbly on the right side of that line that stops it falling head first into TV-movie-of-the-week territory.Assault on Precinct 13
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s cast like an off-Broadway theatrical piece, it works as a spiritual sequel to Training Day (just put the idea into your head that Hawke’s character has undergone a name change and a transfer for his own protection and it works as a great accompaniment to the earlier film!), it puts a new and interesting spin on the original movie (although reverting the original’s groundbreaking notion of a black cop and a white criminal was a silly move!) and it really is an entertaining, adrenaline-charged thrill ride, worthy of your attention. It’s one of the strongest remakes I’ve seen and considering I’m a Carpenter nut and a die hard worshipper of the original version, you should trust me when I tell you that this is a pretty respectful reinterpretation!Backdraft
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a good, old-fashioned Hollywood “pot-boiler” of the highest order, it’s exceptionally well-cast (Kurt Russell, Scott Glenn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rebeccas DeMornay, Donald Sutherland, JT Walsh and Robert DeNiro. Only William Baldwin stands out like a sore-thumb!), it’s got some great set-pieces and it’s special effects and stunt work stands up to this day!Beerfest
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a return to form for the Broken Lizard crew after the hugely (but-slightly-undeserved) maligned Club Dread and the disaster of their “unofficial collaboration” in Dukes of Hazzard, it has some truly inventive laugh-out-loud moments (including a nice homage to John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London) and it makes the Germans the cinematic enemies of choice again! But remember, as the DVD cover says, “please drink responsibly and treat women with respect”!
Behind Enemy Lines
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a bare-faced, but superior, remake of Gene Hackman’s late 80s film, Bat-21, but still has him turn up in this as second lead, it turns Owen Wilson into a surprisingly credible action hero, it uses Feeder and Ryan Adams on the soundtrack, there’s some great little action sequences and it’s a strong debut from director John Moore considering the bloke entered into remake hell (Flight of the Phoenix and The Omen) hereafter!Best Shot (Hoosiers)
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s one of the best sports-films ever made, Jerry Goldsmith’s score is just absolutely friggin’ ace, Gene Hackman burns up the screen, it’s got all the rabble-rousing basketball matches and montages you could possibly want, it’s got a whole lot of heart to it and Dennis Hopper gives a performance well deserving his Academy Award nomination!Black Rain
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s one of those much derided Ridley Scott films from his late 80s/early 90s period but is totally undeserving of such negativity, Michael Douglas gives a committed performance but gets the film stolen from him by Andy Garcia’s charismatic support, Han Zimmer’s music, the heartbreaking decapitation scene, that crazy finale involving a mass gunfight and a motorbike chase and Scott shooting the hell out of his Japanese locations!The Break-Up
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE for anyone in, or coming out of, a long-term relationship it is extremely worth-while viewing, it’s actually really funny – which isn’t always the case for comedies these days, it’s got an exceptional supporting cast (Jon Favreau, Jason Bateman, John Michael Higgins, Ann-Magaret, Judy Davis, Joey Lauren Adams and Vincent D’Onofrio), it’s ending is pretty brave but loyal to the material for a film of this genre and it’s just a really recommendable film, unworthy of being demeaned because of the Vaughn/Anniston tabloid bullshit!Brubaker
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a surprisingly good, very early 80s Robert Redford vanity piece that works rather well, it’s got a talented supporting cast (a young Morgan Freeman, Murray ‘The Major from Jaws’ Hamilton and the excellent Yaphet Kotto), it’s meant to be based-on-a-true-story and it doesn’t shy away from being as violent and powerful as it needs to be in getting the story (of a new prison warden who poses as a prisoner, only to discover vast corruption and numerous murders within the walls of his new establishment) across to you, the viewer!The ‘Burbs
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s funny, scary, quirky and inventive – all in equal measures, Jerry Goldsmith does another brilliant score, Joe Dante does a superb job at the helm, it’s probably one of Tom Hanks’ best ‘early-comedy-based’ roles, it contains the only bearable adult performance Corey Feldman has ever given and that ending is just screwball-crazy perfect!Cellular
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a genuinely brilliant, cheesy slice of B-movie nonsense, it’s got a great little cast (Chris Evans, William H Macy, Noah Emmerich and Kim Basinger), Jason Statham’s ridiculous American accent is all part of the fun of the film, it’s got a Jessica Biel cameo at the front and back end of the film (which is, funnily enough, her best parts too!), it’s got some cool little chase sequences in it and it’s one-note high concept (a kidnapped teacher manages to make a one-call-enabling phone out of broken parts, calling any number she can and the young man answering her call on his mobile has to find her, help her and fend off the people responsible before his phone battery goes flat or the call is disconnected) works – for me – far better then Larry Cohen’s other ‘phone’ related story, Phonebooth!Con Air
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s got a superb cast (Nicolas Cage, John Malkovich, John Cusack, Ving Rhames, Colm Meaney, Steve Buscemi, Rachel Ticotin, Dave Chappelle, Mykelti Williamson, Monica Potter and a toy rabbit!) playing some pretty original characters, Scott Rosenberg’s screenplay is terrific, it’s got it’s tongue wedged as firmly into the side of it’s cheek as you can possibly expect it to, there’s some ace action sequences, some smart-one-liners and it’s got John Cusack playing one of the best sandal-wearing action heroes this side of Charlton Heston’s Ben-Hur. Not only that though but it’s got one of the most bat-shit-insane, superb, out-of-this-world stupid, entertaining-as-hell finales involving a plane crash in Las Vegas, a stolen fire engine, heroes on motorbikes, an obliterated security truck full of money and a villain getting his head crushed – and I didn’t even allow myself to mention Cage’s mullet!The Cooler
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s genuinely bloody ace, superbly co-written and directed by Wayne Kramer in which he draws extraordinary performances across the board from the likes of William H. Macy, Maria Bello, Ron Livingston, Shawn Hatosy, Paul Sorvino, the fat one from N*Sync and especially Alec ‘Answering Machine’ Baldwin. Hell, he even goes and gets something resembling a “performance” out of Estella Warren too. It’s quirky and unique, funny, touching and thoroughly involving – and, if none of this sells you, then just see it because Maria Bello gets her tits and muff out!The Corrupter
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s probably (pre-Pirates 3) the best American film Chow Yun Fat has made (but that’s not saying much really!), it’s strongly scripted and has a rather good little car chase in it and, whilst Mark Wahlberg is as annoying to me as ever, it’s a great little “cops and robbers” potboiler involving an NYPD unit trying to stop a turf war from erupting between the Triads and the Fukinese Dragons. Fair enough, you’ll not remember much minutes after it has ended but you’ll not feel disappointed whilst your watching it!Crimson Tide
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s easily, and rather unfairly, written off as ‘another’ Simpson and Bruckheimer empty-headed production number but it’s far more than that, Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington spar wonderfully together, it’s directed with great aplomb by Tony Scott, Hans Zimmer’s score has now become something of a legend (there’s barely an action movie trailer released without elements of his music from this film being used in it), Quentin Tarantino’s ‘script-doctoring’ stands out a mile but not in a bad way, it’s edge-of-the-seat stuff and it’s probably one of the best of it’s type – definitely one of the best “movies-of-some-consequence” that Simpson and Bruckheimer liked to enjoy throwing out every now and again!Daredevil: The Director’s Cut
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s enormously superior to the original studio-forced theatrical release, Affleck is actually rather good in the role and shouldn’t have avoided the possibility of a franchise post-release, the sub-plots returned to the film (including one involving Coolio!) are worth your time and not some tacky-add-ons, the ‘darker’ slant Mark Steven Johnson takes with the directors cut is very much welcomed, Jennifer Garner is hot as hell and Colin Farrell isn’t in it enough to poison the screen like he normally does! If you own the original version on DVD you seriously need to consider replacing it. It’s well worth it!Dark Blue
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE, whilst Training Day (its nearest companion piece in terms of story) is near perfection in terms of the genre it falls into, this film takes a more serious, grounded stance and was drop-kicked by many critics and stomped on by audiences following a delayed release in order to avoid its aforementioned competitor. Based on an original story by James Ellroy, this is the film Kurt Russell deserved to win an Oscar for but was robbed of even so much as a nomination. For all of Training Day’s (admittedly entertaining) overblown theatrics, this is a film that just looks, smells and feels real to you, the viewer. It’s a real gem and I recommend it to you whole-heartedly!Dawn of the Dead (2004)
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE too many people just regard it as a “surprisingly good” remake of a horror classic when it is much more than that – it’s a genuinely great film in it’s own right, then there’s the excellent cast, the numerous top-notch set-pieces, ‘that’ absolutely superb opening sequence (definitely one of the top five of it’s year!), zombie babies, armed trucks with chainsaw slats, the much-discussed ‘super-fast’ zombies and an ending that 28 Weeks Later has already paid “homage” to.Daylight
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s the hark back to the good, old-fashioned disaster movies of ye olden days that the likes of Volcano, Dante’s Peak and all those other “try-hards” of the mid-to-late-nineties dreamed of being but didn’t even come close, Bruce Roberts and Donna Summer provide one of the best so-bad-that-it’s-great end title songs in movie history, it’s the sort of cheesy pap that you just can’t help but embrace, it’s also the sort of nice little piece of entertainment that Rob Cohen used to churn out well before he went all Stealthily-Fast-and-Furious on us. Stallone’s good value, the dog lives and Stallone Junior proves that his atrocious appearance in Rocky V was no one off. A really good reinvention of the disaster movie genre.Days of Thunder
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it is NO WHERE NEAR as bad as you’ve heard it is, the race-car sequences are still magnificently shot to this day and who gives a shit about a ‘silly’ script in the face of that? It’s got a supporting cast of great character actors (John C. Reilly, Cary Elwes, Randy Quaid and Michael Rooker – to name but a few), Hans Zimmer’s score on this is probably one of my favourites (I shouldn’t really admit that!), Robert Duvall talks to cars, Nicole Kidman has some meat on her bones (unlike her more recent films), Tom Cruise explains stock-car racing to her using sugar packets on her naked body AND, by the final race, when his Cole Trickle comes bursting through the smoke to Zimmer’s score I defy anyone not to get sucked in – even if it’s just a little.Dead Calm
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a taut, edge-of-the-seat thriller too easily dismissed and completely denied the respect it deserves for what it does so extremely well, it’s got the only bearable Billy Zane performance I’ve encountered, it’s got a death-by-flare-gun-to-the-face moment, a dog/harpoon-gun interface, Phillip Noyce’s direction will literally have you gasping for breath in some moments thanks to some brilliant editing, scoring etc. and – most importantly of all – Nicole Kidman gets her tits out!Dead Presidents
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s got all these quirky little moments (too numerous to mention) that make it stand out from the glut of ‘ghetto-movies’ that pollute the movie industry, it’s a Vietnam War film mixed with a heist movie sprinkled with a dash of the coming-of-age stuff and layered with a great period soundtrack – all from the ‘black man’s’ perspective and the heist itself, from a cinematic/technical point of view, is executed superbly. And Chris Tucker manages to prove he’s got some talent too!Dear Frankie
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s probably one of the loveliest, most heart-warming and just utterly divine movies that nobody in the whole world seems to know about apart from me. Put this on alongside On a Clear Day and marvel at the enchanting and genuinely brilliant screenplays coming out of Scotland these days, then shake your head in disgust as the majority of the UK can’t get to see them until we hunt them out on DVD because the majority of ‘our’ output is all London gangsters and regurgitations of The Full Monty. It’s the story of Frankie, a deaf nine-year-old living with his mother, Lizzie (Emily Mortimer) and grandmother in a variety of ‘temporary’ homes as Lizzie tries to escape the violence subjected to her by Frankie’s dad. Desperate to protect her son, Lizzie has invented a story to satisfy her son’s curiosity about who and where his father is – she writes letters to him, pretending to be his dad, telling him of his adventures as a merchant seaman in exotic locations around the world. But when the boat she has been using as her “cover” comes to dock in the new hometown, Lizzie chooses to pay a stranger (Gerald Butler) to pretend to be Frankie’s dad in order not to break his heart. Wonderful!Deja Vu
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE audiences not turning up to see it is not an entirely fair indicator of how good this film actually is and it deserves reappraisal on DVD. It’s smart and involving and pays you back enormously for the attention you invest in it, it’s another example of Denzel Washington’s best “commercial” work being done within the Bruckheimer production house, it’s time-travel stuff is so convoluting and out-there that you actually begin to buy into it, the split-screen car chase finally affords Tony Scott and his epilepsy-inducing flashy style of direction a ‘place-to-settle’ and the screenplay is further evidence of why Terry Rossio (and screenwriting partner Ted Elliott – only working here on script-doctoring and executive producing) is/are the best screenwriter(s) in the industry at the moment!Desperate Measures
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s like Silence of the Lambs meets Die Hard in a hospital by way of any one of those TV-movies-of-the-week where the kid is dying of cancer or whatever and the parent will do anything to keep him alive! And cast with actors of enormous ability (Andy Garcia, Michael Keaton, Brian Cox and Marcia Gay Harden) instead of the likes of Jean Claude Van Damme and Shannon Tweed. Taking away those god-awful moments involving the ‘dying son’ (who’s on death’s door but still proves to be a “fly in the ointment” when he needs to be. Hmmm, I smell a faker who just wanted a few days off school methinks – but what sort of sick fucking kid opts for ‘cancer’ as his disease du jour?), what you’re left with is a compelling game of cat-and-mouse between cop and serial killer – the former wanting the latter’s bone marrow in order to save his son and having to step into the firing line between aforementioned serial killer and the entire police department, in order to keep him alive when he escapes and goes crazy within the hospital – that moves at a cracking pace and is unashamed about going all out to entertain the shit out of you!District 13
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE you’ve never realised it before but you’ve waited your whole life to see what would happen if the French re-made the Carpenter classic Escape From New York as a ‘parkour’ (free-running) movie mixed with enormous dollops of Ong-Bak-esque wire-free martial arts stunts… and this is it and it doesn’t disappoint. It’s an exhilarating, cheesy-as-hell, genuinely enjoyable slice of B-movie fun that’s a good few notches up from the guilty-pleasures of The Transporter movies.The Edge
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s probably one of the most undeservedly under-rated films of all time, it’s got this fantastic script by David Mamet that shows that even when he is churning out genre-nonsense on demand (read Art Linson’s memoirs for the full hilarious story) he is at the top of his game, it’s got another magnificent score by Jerry Goldsmith, it plays like this terrific little two-hander between genuinely great acting talents Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins, it actually teaches you stuff as you watch it (want to know how to make fire out of ice or how to make a compass out of a leaf and a piece of metal? Watch this film!) and it’s got Bart the Bear eating Michael from Lost! And I feel like I’ve done a good enough job selling you on this flick that I don’t need to mention that Elle Macpherson is in it too!EdTV
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s actually a pretty decent little comedy, trampled on by the weight of Peter Weir’s masterpiece, The Truman Show (released the same year), due to similar (but NOT identical) concepts [Truman is an unwilling and unknowing participant, Ed is not!], it’s a funny, touching and interesting screenplay by Ron Howard’s favourite boys, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, that gets more and more timely with each passing year, it’s got Bon Jovi on the soundtrack, it’s impossible not to fall head over heels in love with Jenna Elfman in this film and it’s got – minus Elizabeth Hurley of course – a truly wonderful cast (Matthew McConaughey, Elfman, Woody Harrelson, Ellen DeGeneres, Sally Kirkland, Martin Landau, Rob Reiner, Dennis Hopper and, this being a Ron Howard movie, the ‘legend’ that is Clint Howard!).Ed Wood
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a true story about someone (eccentric filmmaker Ed Wood, allegedly the “world’s worst movie director”, clearly the “world” has not encountered the work of Paul WS Anderson?) who doesn’t – at face value – appear worthy of a big budget, Disney-backed biopic but on looking closer you start to think they’ve made this guy and his entire life up. It’s cast to absolute perfection with Bill Murray being a stand-out but it being impossible not to mention the wonder that is Johnny Depp and it’s just a genuinely interesting, thorough-involving and surprisingly touching story of a man whose story you could have quite easily gone your whole life without needing to know about but feel quite good now that you do.Enduring Love
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE of that opening sequence involving the hot-air balloon, an indisputably petrifying set-piece, Rhys Ifans masterfully terrifying performance as Jed, another truly sublime supporting piece from Bill Nighy, Jeremy Sams’ haunting music, Joe Penhall’s thorough and quite brilliant adaptation of Ian McEwan’s source novel and Roger Michell’s deliberately cold, stark and scarily staid direction for which the film is all the better for it. Where the film actually does fall down is in it’s two lead performances where Daniel Craig and Samantha Morton come across like two amateur-dramatic-obsessed teenagers and their performances that are thoroughly-earnest-but-rather-naff-in-a-showy-but-empty sort of way. Still hugely recommendable despite that though!The Faculty
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it was quickly forgotten and squashed under that post-Scream deluge of stupid, one-note post-modern horror films and treat like the bastard step-child of such films despite a) being written by Kevin Williamson, the very man who started the trend in the first place b) being directed by Robert Rodriguez, who does a wonderful job and c) being rather good. It’s got a smart script, it’s well-cast (Elijah Wood, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Josh Hartnett, Shawn Hatosy, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, Jon Stewart and Daniel Von Bargen) and it’s, at various turns, scary and funny and identifiable. There’s a few clunkers here and there in terms of dialogue and special effects but you’ll have a better time with this then you would with finding out what they did last summer in that other friggin’ movie!The Firm
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s one of the early, superior John Grisham adaptations before they just became cinematic-deadwood, it’s got a cast to die for and it’s a cracking little potboiler of a thriller – if slightly over-long… Who the hell am I kidding here? “Slightly”? Its 148 minutes. That’s 40-odd minutes overdone if you ask me. Sydney Pollack can indeed throw these sorts of movies out with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back but time hasn’t been kind to The Firm and it deserves a bit more love these days: It’s complete piffle of the highest order but it’s over-cooked piffle that will suck you in and thrill the living shit right out of you with it’s glossy, Hollywood veneer. The Firm deserves re-embraced!Flirting With Disaster
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s David O. Russell’s ‘sophomore’ effort after he’d spanked his monkey but before he went off and made his masterpiece, leading the Three Kings, and way before he verbally chinned Lily Tomlin on YouTube. It’s also an early, pre-over-exposed turn from Ben Stiller, leading a pack of under-rated actors/comedians (Patricia Arquette, Tea Leoni, Alan Alda, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Lily Tomlin and Richard Jenkins) in this story of a man taking his wife, baby and the adoption agency worker he can’t stop thinking about on a road trip to locate his biological parents. Zaniness does indeed ensure, but it’s the good/weird zaniness that could only come from the guy that made his debut with a film about a boy who fucks his own mother, then refers to it in the press-release as “semi-autobiographical”.The Frighteners
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a solid scary/funny/action-packed special effects extravaganza that, for me personally, stands as one of the strongest – if not the strongest – films Peter Jackson has ever made. Sit the fuck down LOTR geeks, I know what you’re going to say and I don’t care! Michael J. Fox gives a great lead performance and whoever thought of casting two cult horror icons – The Howling’s Dee Wallace Stone and Re-Animator’s Jeffrey Combs – in supporting roles deserves a medal of ingenuity. It’s fast, fun and truly original. There’s not a clichéd, one-note moment in the entire film. Yeah, it might run a little all over the place by the time you enter into the third act, but isn’t that’s what’s fun about the best ‘ghost train’ rides at the fair? You never know what’s round the next bend!Glory Road
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE these “inspirational-based-on-a-true-story” sports movies are ten-a-penny these days and, once the Kurt Russell flick, Miracle, shot the standards expected into the stratosphere, it’s pretty hard to find one worthy of your time anymore let alone one that is actually any good but this is one of those exceptions. I gave this a go, against my better judgement having read/hated the original script when Ben Affleck was attached, and found this to be a return to the feel-good, thoroughly involving sports-flick Disney used to do exceptionally well until they over did it. Give it a go on a cold, Sunday afternoon. It won’t disappoint you!The Good Girl
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s another superb screenplay by Mike White, John C. Reilly is in it and gives a supporting-performance (alongside Tim Blake Nelson as his sidekick) that is more than worthy of an Oscar, the gorgeous Zooey Deschanel is another supporting player, in fact the entire movie is owned by the supporting cast (Reilly, Nelson, Deschanel, John Carroll Lynch, Deborah Rush and Mike White himself!) but that’s not to say you’re not going to be enthralled by the leads – Jake Gyllenhaal and Jennifer Aniston, yes Jennifer Aniston! It’s an original, dark comedy with a surprisingly poignant heart which is unusual in itself because the darker the comedy the more cruel it usually is but that’s not the case here. By the way, did I mention anything about the flash of Aniston’s boobies?Halloween II
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE out of the glut of exploitative horror genre sequels from the likes of Halloween itself, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, this is probably one of the more superior entries – which is really down to original director John Carpenter being on scripting and producing duties (and, as he says in the book Conversations with Carpenter, unofficial directing and editing duties once the first cut was seen). You should also see it because it’s pretty faithful to the genre-setting, fantastic original (it takes place the same night, only minutes after the first one ended), has the majority of the original – surviving – cast return and goes so far as to expand on the plot-out-lines and characters from the first Halloween (look away now if you didn’t want to know that Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode was Michael Myers’ sister!) and introduce some new and inventive kills as Michael stalks the hospital where Laurie has been taken to following the attack.Halloween: H20
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE by cutting out all those really atrocious sequels that destroyed what was so masterful about the original and just leaving the first film, the second and this, the seventh (shudder!), you have yourself an “unofficial” but rather nice little horror trilogy that tells the story of Michael Myers from boyhood to death, in search of his long-lost sister. Then there’s Jamie Lee Curtis’ ‘20th Anniversary’ performance which is above and beyond the material she’s working with, John Ottman’s score that respectfully plays with Carpenter’s iconic theme beautifully and a screenplay that brings proceedings in at 82 minutes so as daft and unoriginal as it all is (it’s a Michael Myers stalk-and-slash flick ran through the post-Scream mill!), it moves like a bullet and gets in and out of your face before you can get too annoyed with it all.Hard Rain
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it really is an undeservedly maligned cracking little B-movie actioner with some inventive, outstanding and wholly imaginative action set-pieces, it’s got an ace cast (Christian Slater, Morgan Freeman, Randy Quaid, Minnie Driver, Ed Asner, Richard Dysart and the always wonderful Betty White), it’s script is by Graham ‘Speed’ Yost and was derided/man-handled for not being as “high-concept” as his first filmed script and it’s just a nice big old slice of dumb action movie heaven made with high-calibre conviction by all involved. Not worthy of your hatred.The Hard Way
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE John Badham churns these inoffensive popcorn blockbusters out with his eyes closed and is probably one of Hollywood’s most reliable and competent ‘hack’ directors as a result, it’s got a nice little wink-wink-nudge-nudge premise, James Woods makes a surprisingly superb action hero and plays fantastically off of Michael J. Fox who, in turn, delivers a more heavily-comic performance then he is used to giving but aces it, and Daniel Pyne and Lem Dobbs’ screenplay is fast, funny and thrilling with some brilliant car chases and a typical Hollywood high-rise fist-fight-to-the-death elevated by the performers involved. A really under-rated slice of buddy movie genre fodder!The Hills Have Eyes (2005)
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a superior and interesting remake in the vein of, but not superior to, Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead retread the year before, it lies just the right side of being intensely savage and stomach-churning as a well-made gore-heavy horror should (something the vomit-inducing, empty-headed but very-nearly fun sequel failed to do), it’s well-cast, directed with a strong visual eye by Alexandre Aja of Switchblade Romance fame (a nice little horror let down by an atrocious third act revelation) and – from that fifteen minute caravan assault [involving mutants, rape, close-up shot-gun blasts to the gut and head, stolen babies, fists to face etc] onwards – a surprisingly deft, well-paced but brutal horror ride.Hollywoodland
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a rather original interpretation of the usual, boring Hollywood biopic (running an unofficial murder investigation of 1950’s TV Superman, George Reeves, alongside the story of his life in constant parallel), it’s got the gorgeous and enormously talented Diane Lane in it, Ben Affleck is surprisingly friggin’ brilliant in the lead (or co-lead) role and it makes an interesting and unique attempt to cover all the alleged versions of Reeves’ death from suicide to murder and accident! It’s a good little drama of the old-fashioned, LA Confidential-style era.The Hunted
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE, as with Déjà vu, just because audiences didn’t turn up to see it, it doesn’t mean that it’s not a good little film worthy of reappraisal on DVD. It’s fast-moving and brutally-paced (it pretty much starts it’s engines five minutes in and doesn’t let up for ninety minutes – essentially become one long chase sequence) and, whilst you can argue a lot of things about this film (the script is pretty barren if you’re looking for smart dialogue or character development) the one thing you can not call it, which a lot of critics on both sides of the pond did, is “boring”. It’s got two actors at the top of their game – Benicio Del Toro and Tommy Lee Jones – squaring off against each other and it’s hard to tear into the unfortunately spent-talent that is William ‘hire-me-because-my-wife-runs-the-studio’ Friedkin when he’s making a film that digs its claws into the awesomeness of Andrew Davis’ The Fugitive, hangs on for dear-life, casts one of that movie’s actors and ends up with a great slice of ferocious yet empty-headed fun as a result – the type where characters spend ninety-odd minutes chasing each other, only to stop and make home-made knives out of what Mother Nature provides then stab each other to bits on a cliff edge!The Ice Harvest
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE this film is the best possible indicator of what is fucking wrong with movie distribution here in the UK – this film, this awesome, funny, head-spinning, dark, edge-of-the-seat crime caper of a film, was sent straight to DVD here in the UK; despite a cast made up of the superb John Cusack, the always good-value Billy Bob Thornton, the sexy-as-hell Connie Nielsen, the mixed-bag of crazy that is Randy Quaid, the great character actor Mike Starr and the fantastic, never-bad, scene-stealing tornado of brilliance that is Oliver Platt. It’s in and out of your life quicker then the bullet out of one of the character’s guns, it never spoon feeds you a single second of material or insults your intelligence (which is probably why it failed as audiences these days don’t seem to like to be challenged and have to think and embrace material – they want John fucking Travolta, William H. Macy and a couple of atrocious US “comedians” to go on a friggin’ road-trip on motorbikes together!) and it’s a surprisingly brilliant film from Harold Ramis who normally does much broader material then this!Insomnia
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a superbly acted, tautly scripted joy of thriller from ‘second-out-of-the-gate’ (if you don’t count his no-budget debut Following) director Christopher Nolan that kind of amazed me on it’s big-screen release because critics gave bad early word on it, then raved about it on its actual release and then abandoned it from their end-of-year ‘best of’ lists seemingly because box office receipts indicated that nobody went to see it. It’s got a few fans but often gets unjustly discarded in the face of the other films on Nolan’s cinematic CV. What’s more, Robin Williams’ turn as Walter Finch is a really fucking great portrayal of real-life, calculating evil and makes the film worth seeing for this alone!Judgement Night
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a surprisingly brilliant bit of B-grade action movie bollocks, and one of my secret (not for much longer) B-movie loves as a result, it’s got a great little score by Alan Silvestri, an equally great cast (Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jnr, Stephen Dorff, Jeremy Piven and Dennis Leary – B-movie heaven, although Leary and Piven are TV-A-listers now!) and top-notch direction from under-rated action helmer, Stephen Hopkins (the man who gave 24 it’s sense of pace and visual identity!) in this story of four high-flying best friends who take a wrong turn down the wrong street, get lost, witness a murder and spend a night getting chased through the urban jungle by the murderer and his henchmen. Sink a few beers with friends in front of this one and enjoy it in all it’s cheesy, well-shot glory.Kinsey
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE for once the critics got it totally right but none of us went to see it, it’s an interesting, well-shot and well-acted little film that is both fascinating and funny at the same time. The minute I try and discuss the plot with anyone I start making it sound really staid and boring so let me just steal a line from the back of the DVD and say it’s about a man who sacrificed a lot to study the most private sexual secrets of his country, leave plot-descriptions there and urge you all to seek it out.Ladder 49
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE, after watching it, you too will be completely bemused as to why it took the critical slamming that it did (especially on this side of the pond) and you’ll suddenly find yourself agreeing with Roger Ebert for the first time in a long time regarding this film. It’s not trying to win Oscars or change the world. It was written (by Judgement Night scripter Lewis Colick funnily enough) as a deliberate tribute to the fire-fighters post-9/11 and it shows in all it’s flag-waving, slow-motion glory. It’s got a talented cast who do wonders with the rather clichéd approach to story and character development and whilst it’s not the greatest film ever made, it’s by no means anywhere close to being as bad as it’s been made out to be. It’s a good, strong-willed slice of emotionally-manipulative, big-budget Hollywood drama. Give it a go!Land of the Dead
See my original review by CLICKING RIGHT HERE!Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE, within the realms of original and entertaining family films with their own strong visual identity, this film shits all over the likes of Harry Potter. Yet whilst that franchise gets a guaranteed film-a-year regardless, it seems the chances of seeing more movie versions of the Lemony Snicket books are slim to none. Still to this day I can’t believe how much I actually really loved this film. I went into it under duress and came out thinking it was one of the most wonderful, yet surprisingly dark, kid’s films I’ve seen in a long time – and what an all-star cast too huh? Jesus, when the supporting players are the likes of Meryl Streep and your two-minute cameos are the likes of Dustin Hoffman then you know you’ve got a hell of a cast! What surprised me was the mixed reviews and middling box office attendance. I think it goes back to what I was saying about mass audiences being scared of original content!Love & Sex
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE, for men, it’s probably one of the most easily-accessible of all the indie chick-flicks, it’s got two flawlessly lovely lead performances from Famke Janssen and Jon Favreau, the script is sharp, well-observed and great fun and, furthermore, extras on the DVD reveal that Valerie Breiman’s writer/directorial debut is based on a true story – that of Breiman’s relationship with Adam Herz, the writer of American Pie – and the rumour-mill indicates that the ‘Hollywood Action Hero’ character shown in the movie is based on Jean Claude Van Damme.Mad Dog & Glory
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE, right before it wraps itself up with stupid fisticuffs in the street between the two leads, this is a wonderfully pragmatic romance between a gutless police officer (Robert De Niro) and a bartender (Uma Thurman) who is lent to him for one week when the local gangster (Bill Murray) who “owns” her, feels as if he has to return a favour to the cop for inadvertently saving his life. Forgetting the genius stroke of having De Niro play against his type and Murray against his (nothing special about that these days admittedly, but back then it was a pleasant surprise!), this is all as much about the skill behind the camera too – Martin Scorsese is producing, crime-writing supreme Richard Price does script duties and John McNaughton of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer fame directs. Definitely worth a look!Man of the Year
See my original review by CLICKING RIGHT HERE!Martha Meet Frank, Daniel & Laurence
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s this smart, sexy, funny romantic comedy that got buried underneath the stampede of critics rushing to suck Richard Curtis’ penis for whatever spin on Notting Hill he was pushing out at the time, whereas this is a far superior movie to anything (bar The Tall Guy) that Curtis has done. It’s told in a clever non-linear flashback format that spins and twists upon itself, it’s written by Peter Morgan – the writer who went on to do some fantastic television plays and of course the screenplay for The Queen – and it’s got a fantastic quartet of actors who sell the material wonderfully. They’re Monica Potter (Con Air) as Martha, Rufus Sewell (Dark City) as Frank, Tom Hollander (Pirates of the Caribbean 2 & 3) as Daniel and Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love) as Laurence, as well as Ray Winstone (The Departed) offering great support. It’s known under a variety of titles in various countries so you’ll need to use the IMDB to locate it, but buy this for your girlfriend and she’ll think you’re super-sensitive whilst you get to embrace a truly under-rated romantic comedy in the process!Melinda and Melinda
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s one of Woody Allen’s most interesting and inspired of his recent comedy output, it’s got a fascinating premise (the same story told twice, from two different perspectives – one a comedy, one a tragedy), great performances from the likes of Will Ferrell, Amanda Peet and, especially, Radha Mitchell in the lead, snappy one-liners and, despite the epic scope of the same story being told twice over, the film is always interesting, lean in it’s running time yet surprisingly detailed in what it manages to pack in.Menace II Society
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s the cinematic stick of dynamite that went and reignited a sub-genre started by John Singleton’s awesome Boyz N’ The Hood and killed within a matter of 24 months by a glut of socially irresponsible copy-cats thereafter, it’s seal of quality lies in the fact that, like Singleton’s first appearance, the Hughes Brothers debut saw exactly the same thing happen to the subgenre again in the wake of their film, it still stands well today as a shocking snapshot of life for black teens and, in Larenz Tate’s O-Dog, you have black cinema’s answer to Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. Dead Presidents is a superior film to this but, whilst other film’s carry the over-used-but-rarely-meant poster statement, this really is “the black Mean Streets”.Midnight Sting
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a great little con/caper movie, you get to experience the joy of James Woods and Bruce Dern butting heads and chewing scenery together, it takes the bog-standard/over-done ‘fight movie’ and turns it on it’s head with an absurd yet interesting story concept (a retired boxer gets back into the ring again to take on ten opponents in twenty-four hours), it’s got a young-sexy-but-can’t-act-for-toffee Heather Graham in it (Graham and Woods got together on this film!) and best of all, it’s got Oliver Platt doing his scene-stealing support work again to hilarious effect!The Moguls
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s the movie Kevin Smith worries about now that his next comedy is about a bunch of amateurs who go to make a porno (pretty much exactly the same as this movie!), it’s got some funny little moments in it but it’s also got some downright racist ones too (one subplot involves a trio of black-men getting fired off the porno because the presumption was that they would have large penis’, only to find that they don’t!) but the real reason why you should invest your time in this under-rated comedy is all down to the cast – Jeff Bridges, Ted Danson, William Fichtner, Patrick Fugit, Lauren Graham, Glenne Headly, Tim Blake Nelson, Joe Pantoliano and Jeanne Tripplehorn – having a whale of a time!Mr 3000
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE I went to the trouble of importing this from the US based solely on the fact that a) Bernie Mac was hilarious in The Original Kings of Comedy b) the trailer made me laugh my arse off and c) I really wanted to see it but there was no release window in the UK for it. You should see it because, whilst I’m being honest enough to admit that it didn’t live up to my expectations from the hysterical trailer, I’m going all out to say that it’s a nice little, honest-and-from-the-heart sports comedy that will give you a good time thanks to Bernie Mac’s winsome lead performance but won’t even attempt to offer you up anything new or original in terms of the genre it represents.My Cousin Vinny
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s one of my favourite comedies of all time (yes, I know, flame away on me!) and when I next reshuffle my DVD collection I’m going to be bold and promote it to the Modern Classics section, Joe Pesci’s lead performance is an absolute comedy delight, Marisa Tomei’s role as his leather-clad girlfriend is admittedly not Oscar worthy but is still an excellent, comedic tour de force, there’s even more great support work from the likes of Ralph ‘The Karate Kid’ Macchio, Bruce McGill, the late great Perry White and Fred Gwynne, Dale Launer’s screenplay is a sharp work of verbal and physical modern farce and the court-room hijinks are thrilling and involving from both a dramatic and comedic stand-point. It is a fast and funny comedy from start to finish and deserves stronger recognition because of this. The defence rests your honour!My Summer of Love
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s got an early, sexy and sensual performance from Emily Blunt – America’s new ‘darling British import’ and, best of all, it’s got another searing, intense and outright flawless performance from Paddy Considine, the best actor Britain has had in a long, long time. I bought this as a present for my girlfriend and somehow I just ended up keeping hold of it, and getting her a bunch of flowers instead. It’s a teenage-rites-of-passage movie with a really strong erotic edge to it. Definitely worth adding to your on-line rental list if you’re into that sort of thing!Mystery Men
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it teeters dangerously close to the edge of falling back into cult status or actually belatedly finding a mass audience and finally being embraced in the way that it deserves, it’s inventive and funny and an out-and-out visual treat, and then there’s that cast: Hank Azaria, Claire Forlani, Janeane Garofalo, Eddie Izzard, Greg Kinnear, William H. Macy, Lena Olin, Paul Reubens, Geoffrey Rush, Ben Stiller, Wes Studi and Tom Waits! Come on? You can’t get cooler then that right? You can get this on-line now for like £2.99 or something. There’s now no excuse for it not to be in everybody’s DVD collection.Narrow Margin
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a first-rate genre piece, a cracking little remake and an edge-of-the-seat, slow-burning thriller scripted and directed by Peter Hyams, it’s got two great lead performances by two hugely talented and competent actors, Gene Hackman and Anne Archer, and it’s coming up to nearly 18 years since it’s original release and it’s still lacking the level of respect it deserves. Between my friends and I we rate this film as the ‘guaranteed Saturday night post-pub film’, as in when you come in drunk from the pub and flick through the channels this is the film that ALWAYS seems to be on in the early hours and you end up watching and talking about the next day. The word-of-mouth needs to go in to overdrive and demand a full and immediate reappraisal of this film!The Nest
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a first-rate European action film that, unlike the likes of The Transporter and other Luc Besson productions, isn’t capable of being easily dismissed as cheesy nonsense or an instant guilty pleasure. It’s a genuinely brilliant genre piece that show’s Clark Johnson’s SWAT up as the film it could have been. It’s the story of a female officer in the French Special Forces who is leading her team in their mission to escort the Godfather of the Albanian mafia to his trial. When hired killers ambush them in transit, and after a frantic chase, the Special Forces unit take cover in a massive warehouse… only to realise that they’re not alone; there’s a crew of incompetent criminals trying to rob the place and a skeletal group of warehouse staff working the nightshift. As the killers, amassing in number, lay siege to their hideout the cops, the criminals and the lowly-paid staff must band together to survive the night. If it’s true that French action films are incapable of being anything more, story-wise, then rips on old Hollywood movies (District 13 is evidence of that) then this is as blatant a rip-off of John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 as you can get. The thing is when it’s this fucking expeditious and visually incensed; you’re going to struggle to care. Search this one out. It’s well worth it!Nighthawks
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s Rocky Balboa teaming up with Lando Calrissean to track down and capture The Hitcher, and protect The Bionic Woman. Does that not immediately secure your attention? It’s got some tense, thrilling set-pieces, a few great chase sequences, some excellent New York location shooting and, as dated as the film has become, it’s well worth a look just to see Sylvester Stallone dressed as a woman (with a beard!) just so he can get the jump on Rutger Hauer in the film’s final sixty seconds.The Notebook
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE I cried like a motherfucking bitch when I saw this for the first time… and the second… and the third too! I dug the hell out of this film. I know it’s probably not cool for me to admit that and I know that there’s going to be a few of you naysayers trying to get me to reconsider this as a “guilty pleasure” at best, but screw you. This is way above a guilty pleasure for me. It’s a genuinely impressive, hugely under-rated romance and, for me, is a tear-jerker in the true, classical sense. In James Garner and Gena Rowlands, the film has its heart and emotional core. In the gorgeous Rachel McAdams and the enormously talented, the film has the required ‘hold’ needed to keep you locked in for Garner and Rowlands to do their fantastic work. It’s an immensely enjoyable ‘doomed romance’ flick that is elevated above and beyond such a label by the performances of all involved – if this had been Paul Walker and Lindsay Lohan playing younger versions of a “phoning it in” Donald Sutherland and Ann-Margaret then this film wouldn’t have even come close to being what it is!On A Clear Day
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE if my comments about Dear Frankie have caused you to seek it out and you’ve subsequently enjoyed that piece of heart-felt Scottish cinema, then this is a real triumph-over-adversity/laughter-through-tears companion piece that I guarantee you’ll love too. It’s too easy to dismiss this as a “Full Monty” knock-off, but this is the superior film, with richer characters and a better plot (a recently jobless 55 year old Scotsman decides to use his newly found free time to face up to the inner-demons that torment him by swimming the English Channel), not to mention a whole host of truly brilliant actors led by the awesome Peter Mullan and the always excellent Brenda Blethyn!One Hour Photo
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE Mark Romanek’s screenplay and direction is a surprisingly fresh take on one of the most tired of subgenres in movie history (the protagonist stalked/endangered by the enemy within their own circle a la Fatal Attraction, Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Single White Female etc. etc. etc.), Robin Williams’ performance in this is absolutely sensational, Connie Nielsen is as sexy as always, Gary Cole does fine scene-stealing support again and, even after repeated viewings, that bit involving the nightmare and the blood bursting from the eyes, still knocks me for six every time!Orange County
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s directed by Lawrence Kasdan’s son, Jake, and it stars Tom Hanks’ son, Colin, along with Sissy Spacek’s daughter, Schuyler Fisk, it’s got a screenplay by the ever-brilliant Mike White, it’s got one of Jack Black’s best ever performances, in my humble opinion, and it’s got a supporting cast that any film would absolutely die to have: the funniest woman on the planet, Catherine O’ Hara, the always great-value John Lithgow, the brilliantly sardonic Lily Tomlin, the-oh-my-God-Egon-got-fat Harold Ramis, the chameleon-like Mike White himself and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Ben Stiller, to name but a few of many. It’s also one of the most quotable films that I’ve seen in a long time and one of the funniest to boot, yet I can’t get a single friggin’ person to watch it because they all claim to have lost interest in “Jack Black’s schtick” even though I tell them that this isn’t that “type” of film! Idiots!Outbreak
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s probably the first and last time you’re ever going to see Dustin Hoffman in a full A-list, blockbuster ‘action hero’ lead role, it’s got a great cast of supporting players who all got even more insanely talented/unjustly famous in the years after this film (Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, Donald Sutherland, Kevin Spacey and… er… Cuba Gooding Jr and Patrick Dempsey), it’s got a few great little action set pieces, it’s as tense as you’d want a top of the line first-rate thriller to be and it’s directed by Wolfgang Petersen, who is undoubtedly one of the best ‘shooters’ when it comes to taking average material and making it above and beyond your expectations!The Paper
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE brothers David and Stephen Koepp have written a cracking little screenplay soaked with zinging dialogue and brilliant one-liners that the cast, all at the top of their game here, (Michael Keaton, Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei, Randy Quaid and Robert Duvall) have the time of their life with, it’s a film that is both very funny yet hugely dramatic in equal measures and Ron Howard proves yet again that it’s his all-star “smaller” films (this, EdTV, Parenthood etc.) that really show off his directorial talent. The printing room punch-up may take the film into the realms of farce – a direction you, the viewer, may not be prepared to go in but it’s only a small flaw in a great little film set over 24 hours in the world of journalism.The Peacemaker
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it was a film judged more for being the “premiere film” out of the gates of Dreamworks SKG and not for actually what it is; an actually pretty damn good little political thriller/action adventure! Hans Zimmer’s score, yet again, is just superb and hugely involving and George Clooney and Nicole Kidman make a really good double-act; Clooney especially really goes all out to prove his big screen potential he and, on the basis of this film alone, shows a clear ability to play the “action lead” rather well. Admittedly, Mimi Leder’s direction is a tad cold and leaden, and the film would have benefited from a stronger hand (Sydney Pollack would have directed the shit out of this with his eyes closed!) but it’s still a smart little action ride, way better then anything you’ve heard about it.Poseidon
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s very rare that I disagree with Mediamelt on his verdicts when it comes to films but we both seem to be sitting on opposite sides of the fence with this film (he didn’t like it, I enjoyed the hell out of it for what it was – thought it could have been better but could have been enormously worse), it’s Wolfgang Petersen doing another “water-epic” (and when his first of those was the superb Das Boot and the second was the good-but-not-great Perfect Storm, you know it’s well worth a look), the special effects are genuinely superb, there’s some absolutely sublime sequences of utter nail-biting tension (one such example is when all the characters are stuck in an air conditioning shaft that is locked at one end and the water is rising at the other; one character suffers a panic attack and freezes, blocking another character under the water – not a scene that you’ll find it easy to get through if, like me, you struggle with claustrophobia!), there’s a trio of exceptionally stunning young ladies – Emmy Rossum, Jacinda Barrett and Mia Maestro – in the cast and Kurt Russell (‘The Movie God’) is in the lead role. It flopped at the box office and yet it was one of the stronger of the blockbusters released that year!Pretty Persuasion
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s unjustly and incorrectly compared to Mean Girls when, as good as that film is, a) this is the superior movie and b) they are completely different in terms of story and, especially, tone! If anything, its closest companion is Michael Lehmann’s cult gem Heathers. You should see this because it is one of the absolute darkest, enormously funny and extremely clever high school comedies that we’ve had the pleasure of experiencing in a long time, it’s cast is an utter delight (Evan Rachel Wood, Elisabeth Harnois, Jane Krakowski, Jaime King, Selma Blair and Ron Livingston) with James Woods being a total scene-stealing, filthy yet fantastic, scene-stealing joy and it’s script – detailing the story of a spoilt Beverly Hills brat who will stop at nothing to become famous, including assassinating the character of her teacher with a false accusation of sexual misconduct that drags her friends, family and the entire pampered community into the limelight along with her for all the wrong reasons – is genuinely first class. Unjustly sent straight to DVD here in the UK, I urge you to hunt this out and give it some of your time!The Producers (2005)
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick really are the greatest possible predecessors that you could ask to follow-in-the-footsteps of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder (they’re not better, just different!) and this movie, as Mel Brooks declares, exists only to capture their excellent work on film for posterity. Will Ferrell is as hilarious with his role as you’d expect him to be and Uma Thurman is just as sexy and sensual, and surprisingly funny, as you’d want her to be. There’s a trio of great support from Gary Beach, Roger Bart and Jon Lovitz and the musical numbers are always funny, catchy and wonderfully choreographed. The film’s real strength though is that it is working from Mel Brooks’ superb screenplay that he himself has adapted into the musical format and, whilst this filmed version runs a little long, you really can’t miss with a screenplay as strong as the one Brooks has had under his arm since the 60s when he first filmed it to absolute comedic perfection!Punchline
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE out of that huge pile of Tom Hanks 80s high-concept movies this is definitely one of my favourites – and it’s not for the comedy, it’s for the really dark edge that runs around on the outskirts involving Hanks’ character, stand-up comic Steven Gold, that gives him the chances to show the dramatic potential that would later earn him two Oscars. As an ex (amateur) stand-up comic myself, I can tell you this is a pretty realistic representation, even decades on, of the back-stage antics and mental anguish of a comedian that goes on in comedy clubs. It’s a really great little film, a “fascinating drama about the harrowing world of comedy” as the DVD cover says. Rent it and revisit it if you’ve never seen it!The Pursuit of Happyness
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE, to put it simply, there isn’t any rhyme or reason in the world as to how and why this film should have worked anywhere near as brilliantly as it does; Thandie Newton plays a cartoon “villain” within the realms of a reality piece, it’s a “based on a true story” big studio vanity piece and it’s got a real-life father and son playing a father and son who actually exist in real life. Not a chance in hell. For me, I had to be dragged to the cinema to see this. There wasn’t a trailer that I saw or an article that I read about it that made me think this was going to be anything other then a cloying piece of sugary-studio nonsense. The fact that it isn’t, the fact that it excels above and beyond your expectations, lies in Will Smith’s magnetic, reality-soaked lead performance and the subsequent performance he pulls from his young son, Jaden. Furthermore, in his role as producer, Smith has made sure that the film airs the facts and doesn’t overplay the emotional manipulation techniques usually employed by Hollywood (the big, bombastic music to indicate we, the audience, feel joy is saved for the end piece when it is understandably justified and there is great avoidance to use low-key dramatic piano pieces when the characters are in trouble so we can feel sad!) because he knows, in playing with Chris Gardner’s life-story, he’s playing with a pretty poignant tale that, if the audiences don’t embrace, then the film is ruined. All involved do a superb job! A great little uplifting drama.Q+A
See my original review by CLICKING RIGHT HERE!Silverado
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s Lawrence, and his brother Mark, Kasdan revising the conventions of the Western genre – before Unforgiven put it to rest seven years later – with a great script containing some top-notch dialogue and action set-pieces, it’s a cracking little genre piece in it’s own right that is standing the test of time quite admirably, it gave Kevin Costner the taste for Westerns that would subsequently drive him to going off and giving the cinema-going public two classics (Dances with Wolves and Open Range) of his own, and it’s still got a superb cast of character actors to this day as Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Rosanna Arquette, John Cleese, the aforementioned Costner, Brian Dennehy, Danny Glover, Jeff Goldblum and Linda Hunt come together in the story of a town (the Silverado of the title) taken over by a corrupt sheriff and his murderous posse, and the unlikely band of heroes that decide to do something about it!16 Blocks
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a fast and furious, extremely well-paced nigh-on-real-time thriller by reliably great studio shooter, Richard Donner, it shakes off it’s worrying similarities to Clint Eastwood’s 70s guilty pleasure, The Gauntlet, quite well, it’s got David Morse giving fantastic ‘support’ to the main players yet again and, in Bruce Willis’ lead performance, you have one of his best mainstream acting jobs in absolutely ages. In fact, had Die Hard 4.0 not been made, this – with a quick name change in title and lead-character – could have worked surprisingly well as a fourth Die Hard piece as Willis’ Jack Mosley, a broken-down, alcoholic cop estranged from his family, is a natural progression from the John McClane we encountered in Die Hard with a Vengeance. The bus-siege sequence (another slight variation on Eastwood’s The Gauntlet) is a misstep that turns a fast paced thriller into a ponderous drama for a little while, but that aside, this is a great ride well worth taking!Stakeout
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE, of all those buddy-movies – a sub-genre that over-stayed its welcome and started to stink up the cinema (especially once we diluted the formula so much that we had Anthony Michael Hall teaming up with a magical elf from under New York City in Up World) – I think this is definitely one of the strongest and a pretty brilliant companion piece to the classics like Lethal Weapon and Midnight Run. It’s all down to Jim Kouf’s quick-witted, snappy-dialogue-drenched and hugely thrilling screenplay directed with great panache by ‘top-of-the-line-hack’ John Badham (the Brett Ratner of the 80s for those not in the know!) and the absolutely tremendous chemistry between Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez as the two undercover cops staking out the apartment of a woman (Madeleine Stowe) whose ex-boyfriend (Aidan Quinn) has just escaped from prison and is on his way to see her. Forget that genuinely horrific sequel in which Rosie O’Donnell turned up to take co-lead (I shudder just at the thought of it!) and just re-embrace this truly great original slice of 80s buddy movie heaven!Swimming With Sharks
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s George Huang’s slick and stylish writer/director ode to his time spent fresh-out-film-school as an assistant to a big-time Hollywood producer (alleged to be Joel Silver pre-anger-management lessons) but changed in the film to a Studio Vice President, and portrayed by Kevin Spacey. It’s an exceptional two-hander, known in the US under the lesser title The Buddy Factor, between Spacey and the under-rated Frank Whaley in which Spacey’s Buddy Ackerman verbally destroys Whaley’s new boy assigned to him (“My bath mat means more to me than you do!”) until one day the apprentice decides to exact revenge against his ‘master’. An immensely quotable slice of independent cinema that every self-respecting film fan should, at the very least, experience driven by Spacey’s enormously likeable portrayal of such a massively dislikeable character!Thank You For Smoking
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE, quite frankly, more people bloody well should. It’s funny, it’s got an interesting topic that it addresses in an entertaining manner and it’s very well acted by all involved (Aaron Eckhart, Katie Holmes, Adam Brody, David Koechner, Maria Bello, Cameron Bright, Sam Elliott, William H. Macy, J.K Simmons, Robert Duvall and Rob Lowe) to boot. In fact, seeing as it’s directed by Jason Reitman – son of 80s comedy directorial god Ivan – and it’s as fresh and funny as it is, you could say it’s superior to anything Reitman Senior has given us in the last ten to fifteen years! If you haven’t seen this yet then you should give yourself a good solid kick then get your arse straight down to your nearest DVD outlet and BUY a copy!Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE of all the post-Pulp-Fiction/Tarantino-wannabes, this Scott Rosenberg scripted gem is the most superior by a mile. It’s cast based on character-actor-weight and not celebrity-name/star-wattage so you get a wonderfully eccentric mixture of the likes of Andy Garcia, Christopher Lloyd, William Forsythe, Bill Nunn, Treat Williams, Jack Warden, Steve Buscemi, Fairuza Balk, Gabrielle Anwar (the weakest performance in the film), Jenny McCarthy and, of course, the sublime Christopher Walken and the script is a quirky little stone-cold thriller about a gang of miscreants who piss off their city’s “Mr Big” and have 48 hours to attend to their business now that they’ve been marked for death. Worth a look if you’ve not seen it but here in the UK it seems to be on Film4 nearly every other month so keep an eye out!Tombstone
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a rootin’, tootin’, ramble-rousing John-Ford-esque western without any attempts to revisit or revitalise the genre, it’s only interested in the grand scope of the story it has available (Wyatt Earp. Doc Holiday. The before and the after of the infamous Gunfight at the OK Corall) and in telling it in the most action-packed of ways, it’s got a stellar testosterone-soaked cast (Hell, even Charlton Heston turns up) led by the awesome Kurt Russell and supported superbly by Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday and, despite being treat like the underdog of Lawrence Kasdan’s hugely epic Wyatt Earp movie, this is the far-superior film. Did I really open this review with the words “rootin’, tootin’”? Oh! My! God!Under Suspicion
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE both Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman have been trying to get this remake of Garde A Vue off the ground for multiple decades, they’ve finally achieved their dream and it is well worth your time. Stephen Hopkins’ visual input as director is the real selling point as, because the film is very heavy with flash-backs within flash-backs, over-lapping of events etc., he keeps every one up to speed and in check with what is going on by having current characters enter into and walk about within their past-events. Monica Bellucci is insanely sexy and sensual and Thomas Jane gives excellent support in this battle of wills between cops in Puerto Rico on the hunt for a killer of women and the rich and powerful lawyer who discovered the latest body but whose statement of events is dangerous flawed!Very Bad Things
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s every friggin’ shade and tone of ‘wrong’ and as cinematic a spit-in-the-face to political correctness as you’d like, it’s a pitch-black comedy (about members of a stag party trying to deal with the aftermath of a boozy weekend in Las Vegas that saw them accidentally kill a whore, purposefully kill a security guard and stupidly dismember both and bury them out into the desert) that you’ll have to embrace fully within the first ten minutes or switch off and abandon and it’s got a cast of then-young-hip-up-and-comers who take Peter Berg’s can’t-get-any-darker screenplay and have a blast with it. You will too, if you have the sort of sick-ass sense of humour that can find something to giggle at when Christian Slater and Jeanne Tripplehorn are beating seven shades of shite out of each other!Wimbledon
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE, ignore Kirsten Dunst’s cancerous lead-romantic-performance and close your eyes for the love-story that takes up about three-quarters of the running time and what you’re left with is a winsome lead performance from Paul Bettany and this really cool, involving and rather touching story of a long-shot professional tennis contender who’s past his prime but desperately in search of one last glorious moment at Wimbledon, the greatest tennis tournament in the world. Rocky with tennis, then. Yes, I know I’m effectively telling you to view this film whilst ignoring a good 60% of its running time and the awfulness of its second-lead, but then you’ll have to just believe me when I tell you that Bettany and his story are THAT worth your time!Wrong Turn
Ahhh, sweet memories! See my original review by CLICKING RIGHT HERE!Year of the Dragon
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s written by Oliver Stone, starring Mickey Rourke back when he was young, full of shit and vinegar and not obsessed with plastic surgery and it’s directed with great gusto by Michael Cimino, desperately out to prove his worth following the disaster of Heaven’s Gate. A businessman/mob leader is assassinated by a member of a Chinese Youth gang in Chinatown and Vietnam vet/decorated cop/loose-cannon-with-a-gun Stanley White (Rourke) is assigned the case. However, White soon realises that the teenage hoodlums are under the control of an ambitious young crime boss, Joey Tai (John Lone) who is making a power play to take over Chinatown, and becomes obsessed with stopping Tai at all costs – even at the risk of his life and that of everything close to him. It’s a film that is dated as hell and incredibly over-long (by a good twenty to thirty minutes) because of subplots that just don’t gel, but it’s an explosive and confrontational potboiler that is a cut above the usual films of this type!And in my crappy, snap-shut cardboard cover range we have the following:
Falling Down
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s probably Joel Schumacher’s best film, his strongest work and the closest he is ever going to get to making a modern classic. As flawed as the film is – and believe me, post 1985, never did I think a studio would sign off on a script with so much casual racism, right-wing call-to-arms and flagrant stereotyping – it’s almost as if it’s asking you to take it’s flaws with a heavy slap of tongue-against-cheek and see the film for what it is at heart; a thrilling yet also darkly comic ride for the American everyman through the decaying urban jungle of everyday life. Wow – that actually sounded really good. Well done me! I’m going to leave this review right here because I can’t better that last sentence. And I didn’t even copy it off the back of the DVD or anything!Heist
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s scripted by David Mamet – end of! If Mamet writes a screenplay then you go and see it and his words will blow your brain out the back of your head, it’s that simple. Lately, Mamet has been directing his own scripts too and he’s been churning out genre-pieces, or his own interpretations of genre-pieces (rumour has it later this year he’s releasing his version of a kung-fu martial arts movie) like this, a crime-caper/wronged-man film with Gene Hackman as the thief caught out with one last job when all those around him leave him broke, betrayed, blackmailed and thirsty for revenge. With a cast including the likes of Danny DeVito, Mamet’s wife Rebecca Pidgeon, Delroy Lindo, Ricky Jay and Sam Rockwell and Mamet shooting a climactic shoot-out like a long-form one-take opportunity, this is a great little edge-of-the-seat head-spinner definitely worth 105 minutes of your time!Liberty Heights
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s Barry Levinson’s autobiographical ode to his teenage years, set in 1954 and following the dramatic social upheaval and the racism, Cadillac’s, rock and roll and religion that permeated that time, told through the eyes of a Jewish family living in Baltimore. It’s a subject Levinson clearly has a lot of heart for and it shows. The soundtrack is a collection of vintage foot-tappers and the overall story is both funny, touching and just lovely and honest. Levinson has done bigger and, if we’re honest, better films and as a result this film is buried underneath the big-named cast ensembles of his other films, but this is still a great little coming-of-age film with a lot of interesting things to say and anecdotes from Levinson up on the screen that are worth your time!A Mighty Wind
See my original review by CLICKING RIGHT HERE!The Negotiator
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE it’s a film that fans of great-but-unacknowledged-character-actors can stop having wet dreams about and accept that it exists (the ‘first tier’ of supporting players is made up of David Morse, Ron Rifkin, John Spencer, J.T Walsh and Paul Giamatti alone – that’s before we even get into the whole host of recognisable actors from leading TV shows that prop up the “second tier”), it’s probably one of the most confident and wholly self-assured ambitionless potboilers that Hollywood has produced in a long time and, in Samuel L Jackson and Kevin Spacey, you have two genuinely talented actors having a blast with the material and going all out in a sea of tension, volatile action, twists and turns to just give the audience an out-and-out great couple of hours. To think that this was written on spec for Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis to star in. It would have been a great slice of pure escapist fun, I don’t doubt, but it would never have been as effortlessly classy as this!Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
YOU SHOULD SEE THIS BECAUSE, to this day, it’s still probably one of the best blockbusters of the last sixteen to seventeen years, it’s unashamedly aggressive in it’s desire to entertain you in the face of bad accents (stand up Mr Costner) miscasting (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, please take a bow!) and dodgy script-moves (gunpowder? Sewers? In what era?). Via Michael Kamen’s timeless music, Alan Rickman’s pantomime-style scene-stealing, Kevin Reynolds using the gorgeous scenery to create a full bodied adventure flick, Morgan Freeman’s masterfully commanding support and Costner’s (accent-aside) admirable turn as a romantic, swash-buckling lead, this is a great little piece of nonsense, too easily derided or written off as excessive. It contains one of my all-time favourite romantic movie moments (when Costner is on the catapult and Freeman climbs on alongside him and says “Is she worth it?” and Costner says “What? Worth dying for?” Freeman nods. Costner nods back and they go shooting over the gate to rescue Mastrantonio’s Maid Marian) that just personifies all that I love about the romance of movies. Forget any director’s cuts or special editions or whatever, just take the 137 minute original and a big bowl of popcorn and just enjoy the shit out of this. Yes, even the end bit with Bryan Adams!
Well?
Questions? Queries? Quibbles?
Complaints? Criticisms? Congratulations?
That’s what these here ATBs are for!
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