I wasn't a fan. The first one was a fun ride but the sequel failed to deliver in every aspect!

I'll give you Reeves but don't say a cross word about Winona Ryder sir (just joking). Oldman was fantastic as Dracula but I still prefer the 1931 version or NOSFERATU.

Clockers

Directed by Spike Lee. Starring the likes of Harvey Keitel, John Turturro and Delroy Lindo. Features a who's who of guys who acted in Goodfellas and Sopranos in cameo roles. Takes a while to get going, but has a very good second half. One complaint is that the soundtrack gets distracting and has a habit of drowning out important dialogue. Also, I don't know what they were thinking naming two important characters "Ronnie" and "Ronald".

If you're a fan of The Wire, you will love this as the similarities are uncanny. This is, of course, because it was adapted from a Richard Price book and he wrote for The Wire.

Watched The Kitchen staring Melissa McCarthy. It's really a downer of a movie and not that good which tends to be the case with many of McCarthy's movies.

It's a combination of a mob movie and girl power. However, all it proves is that women can be just as terrible as men (although women always have a good reason). It takes place in Hell's Kitchen. It paints Hell's Kitchen as really hell. Is it really that bad?

That movie Sucked.
Completely a goof, they took some facts, true stories and places and then twisted the shit out of them.

Hell’s Kitchen was a rough and tumble area for many years up until the late 90’s when it began to change with new people, business and money coming in that invested in the real estate.

The Westies that ran the area back in the day would have cut those women’s heads off and burned them in LIC, literally.

I watched the netflix film The Outsider, not bad if you are into yakuza films.

I saw THE KITCHEN in the theaters and I wasn’t impressed either. Haven’t seen it since and don’t have a desire to. Just another “female power/representation” movie that once again, bombed at the box office as a result.

We saw DARK WATERS yesterday.

we both really enjoyed it and found the story memorable from actual events, agree with your review of the actors but thought the farmers performance was very good and loved his scenes as well as the dude for Shawshank, he was good too.

I might go to a 7 on this one.

Glad you enjoyed DP!

We really did.

Great Recco.

We look through all your reviews and then pick a movie option to view.

Thank you Sir.

Just finished watching Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. That will always be a classic.

A brilliant movie in every respect. World-beating performances not only by Turturro and Fiennes, but also by David Paymer and Hank Azaria (always good), and the great Paul Scofield, who almost steals it in a relatively minor role. Only weak note: Rob Morrow with that phony "Bahston" accent.

Funny u guys raised this up.....1rst time I watched it I fell asleep, I had 1.. 2 many.&..2nd time I saw it was many yrs. later & was in love w/ it...Great Movie!!!

Just watch Green Book this weekend. Loved it

Vivarium
If you know anything at all about the behavior of a certain bird species and/or Irish mythology then this movie's story was very heavily foreshadowed or possibly even spoiled in the first 15-30 seconds. The film might be considered an extended metaphor about the pointlessness of modern suburban life but I thought it worked much better as a modern day Twilight Zone episode. It probably ran on a little longer than necessary. Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots are a gardener and school teacher couple who find themselves in a situation that is unexplainable. It starts with them getting lost. Their day goes downhill from there.

Any more plot description would venture into spoiler territory so let's just leave it at that. This movie isn't quite as intelligent as it imagines itself to be but I appreciated that despite the plot being somewhat predictable the film had the courage to not explain every little thing or force the expected ending. This film was low on special effects or gore but high on creepiness/weirdness. This is something that were it a book, could have been written by Bradbury, King or Lovecraft.

International Falls

First time director Amber McGinnis directed this indie movie.
It's based on a two person play but McGinnis transcends those limitations. It's by far the best movie I've seen in 2020. International Falls tells a familiar story but the director puts her own twist and interpretation on the tale. She mixes drama and absurdity in a way that is realistic and often poignant. In the hands of a lesser director or more intrusive studio, this film would have found the time to grind various ideological axes.

This is not a movie for kids, not because of the adult themes, but because this film will appeal primarily to people who have lived long enough to have regrets and recognize mistakes but who can still change their future. This film brings to mind the Coen Brothers' Fargo because of the surface similarity of each film's depiction of the Swedish/German derived distinctive sing song vowel heavy Upper Midwest accents, specifically those found in Minnesota.The film finds some humor in those tones; a few actors appear to lay it on quite thick.

Dee (Rachael Harris) is a hotel clerk/manager of a certain age who works in International Falls, Minnesota. Dee has two daughters with fellow town native, Gary (Matthew Glave). The slightly built Dee normally keeps her emotions bottled up, which can make it equally humorous and scary when she reveals her true thoughts. Dee and Gary are growing apart. Gary's unfaithful, though Dee is pretending ignorance. Dee has always wanted to be a standup comedian. Dee thinks that life is passing her by more and more quickly.

So when a tall, divorced, similarly aged comedian named Tim (Rob Huebel) stops into the hotel for a two night engagement, Dee is primed to talk to him, learn from him, be his town tour guide, and offer Tim some special hospitality. There's a problem though. Tim is depressed, self-loathing, misanthropic, burnt out, and hates, really, really really HATES his chosen career path. Tim will tell anyone who'll listen that's he's not very good. Tim thinks most comedians stink. Tim believes wannabee comedians are even worse. Tim's depression, anger, and bitterness seep into his jokes, which indeed are mostly bad.

Tim displays subtle disdain and later open hostility for the locals. That is, he shows dislike for everyone except Dee. Tim enjoys Dee's curiosity despite himself. As Dee and Tim interact with one another they each discover some things about themselves. I don't think the film has villains. Dee's description of Gary's ineptness at failing to clear his bizarre PC browser cache and incriminating phone call history is not a "gotcha" moment of female revenge so much as it is a mature rueful acceptance of a spouse's shortcomings. International Falls is not a romantic comedy. This is a quiet bittersweet film. I think anyone who has either considered or taken a new journey in life might enjoy this film.

Thanks for the review Lilo. I saw the trailer for this. Worth a watch or pass?

I thought it was marginally worthwhile. It was unsettling. It would have been more effective with a shorter run time. It is a film that likes to show rather than tell. Dialogue is minimalist once the viewer gets into the meat of the story.

Ok, thanks for the feedback!

you guys should watch the movie - war 2007 with jet li
it's a great movie !

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Boring.

Just added this to the list will track back on your review.

Cool. Pls let me know what you think, good, bad or indifferent.

Gun Crazy
directed by Joseph E. Lewis

I've always liked older movies. Over the past few years I've been watching more noir films. This 1949 film, although it obviously was not explicit in terms of sex or violence, was nonetheless quite bold at how it used those two themes. It was something which was likely Tarantino before its time. It certainly had to have made an impression on Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, in terms of the beret wearing female lead, the innovative camera work and the automobile being used as metaphor for danger and freedom.

Although as mentioned there's little here that would offend modern audiences in terms of sex/violence (people fall down wordlessly when they're shot, an attractive woman runs while wearing tight clothing) in some aspects this is an intensely sexy film. The leads had great chemistry together.

Bart Tare (John Dall) is an aw shucks kind of guy who, despite being unwilling to harm any living creature, has since childhood been obsessed with firearms of all kinds. Not only is he a natural marksman, he works continually to improve his aim and speed. After a stint in reform school for stealing a gun he's spent much of his adult life in the army training other soldiers to shoot. Coming home, he and his friends attend a carnival featuring skilled sharpshooter Annie Starr (Peggy Cummins), a young woman who shows off incredible gun skills to the audience and routinely defeats any challengers.

Both Annie and Bart like what they see in each other. Egged on by his friends, Bart challenges Annie to a duel of skills, and wins. THAT really turns Annie on. She convinces the carnival boss Packett (Berry Kroeger) to hire Bart. As Bart finds out though Packett and Annie have history together. And Packett at least would like to have a future with Annie.

One night Bart prevents Packett from assaulting Annie. Packett fires them both. Bart and Annie get married. The two don't have much money. Annie loves Bart because by her lights he's a real man with guts. But she has no interest in waiting around for him to build a life for her on a $40/week job that he hasn't found yet. She has ideas for quick money, robberies. Bart agrees provided no one gets hurt. But Annie doesn't have the same objections to violence that hubby does.

This was an entertaining movie that in so many ways was the filmic incarnation of the later Eagles lyrics:


The husband and wife have different pasts and different ideas about the utility of violence. They argue with each other, but they are incredibly loyal to and protective of each other, no matter what. This was really more Cummins' film than Dall's. Annie is always watching her husband's back and woe to anyone she thinks will harm Bart, even his relatives or cops. Dall and Cummins improvised much of their dialog with each other, which added to the film's naturalistic feel.

For at least the 20th time, The Man Who Would be King with Sean Connery and Michael Caine. A great story, transferred to film very well.

A few on my to watch list.

New Jack City
The Game
Session 9
Cube
Frantic

I'm watching Goldfinger again Thunderball next.

1 of my Top 3 Bond films along with GOLDENEYE and CASINO ROYALE. Classic film!

THE NARROW MARGIN (1952)

I watched this little (70 min.) film noir because it stars Marie Windsor, my Favorite Femme Fatale of the Fabulous Fifties (she and Sterling Hayden are the two whose movies I'll never pass up). She plays the widow of Frankie Neall, a big time mobster, who's on her way by train from Chicago to LA to testify before a grand jury. She's being guarded by LAPD Det. Sgt. Walter Brown (Charles McGraw), who knows that other mobsters are on that train, planning to kill her. Windsor is at her hard-boiled best and gets most of the many snappy lines in the script. (You thought Eileen Brennan wrote the book on Tough Dames? She's a den mother compared to Windsor.) McGraw is just as hard-boiled and plays his part convincingly with his gravelly voice and bent nose (he was a boxer), looking like a cross between Kirk Douglas and real-life tough guy Lawrence Tierney. Filming is brilliant in the deliberately claustrophobic confines of a train, and the supporting cast, especially Jacqueline White as a seemingly innocent mother, is superb. There are plenty of surprises and twists in the story. But, the plot is too improbable to be convincing--starting with having only one cop guarding a critical witness, and all the times that Brown abandons Neall to generate dramatic situations. I liked it a lot, but it's still a B-movie.