The Godfather

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Writers: Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola
Released: 1972
Cast: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Abe Vigoda, Talia Shire, John Cazale

The Conversation

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Writer: Francis Ford Coppola
Released: 1974
Cast: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Frederic Forrest, Cindy Williams, Robert Duvall

Surveillance

Director: Jennifer Lynch
Writer: Jennifer Lynch, Kent Harper
Released: 2008
Cast: Bill Pullman, Julia Ormond, Pell James, Ryan Simpkins, Kent Harper, French Stewart, Michael Ironside

NIKKI says:
Compelling from beginning to end. I could barely look away from it. Every beat, every motion, every shot, every word is deliberate and calculated to build a mystery while solving another one.

Here, a scenario is presented, as seen through the eyes of three people (and three of the most unreliable narrators you can get) -- a crackhead, a bent cop, and an eight-year-old. The story goes that the cop and his partner stopped the girl's family on a routine speeding check, with the crackhead and her boyfriend literally caught in the middle when they stop to help the family, unaware of the cops behind them. In minutes, all but those three witnesses will be dead. But who saw what? Who did what? How does it all fit together with the spree killers on the loose as well? Two FBI agents are brought in to interview the witnesses and find out the truth.

It's all about seeing -- what we see, what we notice about people, how we react to each other. It's about looking for the details within the bigger picture; within bigger, skewed pictures. What does it mean to witness something? And what is it that we really see when we watch other people?

There are layers to this film. It's so intricately put together. It's been so long since I've thought to myself half way through a movie, "This is brilliant." The writing, the direction, the imagery -- I'm amazed that Jennifer Lynch has only directed a handful of films. Her attention to detail blew me away. She visually represents her themes in these effortless ways -- the three cars on the road matching the three surveillance camera in the police station, for instance, and the red, white and blue of those cars. She adds significance and purpose to every single shot -- nothing is wasted. (Her dad could learn a few things from her. Haha.)

It's all just amazing. Can't recommend it highly enough.

4.5/5

Charley Varrick

Director: Don Siegel
Writers: Howard Rodman, Dean Riesner
Released: 1973
Cast: Walter Matthau, Joe Don Baker, Andy Robinson, John Vernon, William Schallert, Norman Fell

JCVD

Director: Mabrouk El Mechri
Writers: Frédéric Bénudis, Mabrouk El Mechri, Christophe Turpin
Released: 2008
Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, François Damiens

NIKKI says:
I can admit it: About 1992, when Universal Soldier came out, I had a slight obsession with Jean-Claude Van Damme. I had to watch all of his movies -- my favourite, of course, was Double Impact, probably because there were TWO Van Dammes. I even once let a guy flirt with me at a B&S because he looked exactly like JC. Height and all.

Tragic.

Well, now it all comes full circle. JC, turns out, isn't such a big weirdo as his pseudo-existential, emotional ramblings in the press might have us believe. Yes, he's slightly out there in terms of his philosophies and life choices, but this movie demonstrates that he's not completely insane. He's actually kind of endearing. This movie gives him a platform to change the public record and to reveal actual human depths.

Aside from all the Van Damme revelations and love, this is actually a good film. JC is trying to get some cash from a Belgian bank to pay off some guys and to help rebuild his relationship with his daughter, but the bank isn't co-operating. Seems JC has just stumbled into the middle of a hold up. He is dragged into the back of the bank where he stays with the rest of the hostages while a tense negotiation plays out between cops and robbers.

The genius thing here is JC has been placed into a situation very much like one of his films. He's the underestimated tough guy placed in supposed peril who wham-bams his way out of of the place and saves the girl. But that doesn't happen here. He's still underestimated, but he's hardly a tough guy, and his drive to save himself let alone anyone else is extremely low.

So, what does Van Damme do? Well, that's the key to this story. Its smart, funny, brave, and actually really tense and well-constructed. You will root for JC, and you will see him a new light, and if you don't come away respecting him... well, you just have no heart.

4/5

Boxcar Bertha

Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Joyce Hooper Corrington, John William Corrington
Released: 1972
Cast: Barbara Hershey, David Carradine, Barry Primus, Bernie Casey, Victor Argo, John Carradine

Chinatown

Director: Roman Polanski
Writer: Robert Towne
Released: 1974
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, John Hillerman, Darrell Zwerling, Diane Ladd, James Hong, Burt Young

STEVE says: Every fledgling screenwriter should have a look at this script. It's perfect. Hits every beat with atomic-clock precision, it never lags, and it never telegraphs exactly what's going on, yet makes it all seem inevitable in the end. And of course it is. Right from the beginning.

5/5

Assassins

Director: Richard Donner
Writer: The Wachowski Brothers, Brian Helgeland
Released: 1995
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Antonio Banderas, Julianne Moore

Redacted

Director: Brian De Palma
Writer: Brian De Palma
Released: 2007
Cast: Izzy Diaz, Rob Devaney, Daniel Stewart Sherman, Patrick Carroll, Kel O'Neill

STEVE says: More than one reviewer has called Redacted a return to form for De Palma. And that's funny, 'cause I didn't see any Hitchcock ripoffs in it at all.

It's just another in a seemingly endless stream of movies presented as documentaries or lost footage or home movies (and let me be the one to say it: That gimmick has run its course), and it didn't need to be. It switches back and forth between a young soldier's chronicle of the war on his camcorder, and a French documentary about the troops, for no particular reason, apart from allowing us access with the French that the soldier wouldn't have. But even this conceit doesn't work in the scene where documentary footage is shot from inside a car that the crew do not have access to - and we know this because exterior shots of the car show no crew in the back seat. Sloppy, Brian. Real sloppy.

Some day someone's going to make a good movie about this war. Redacted isn't that movie.

1.5/5

Burn After Reading

Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Writers: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Released: 2008
Cast: George Clooney, Francis McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins

STEVE says: I haven't seen a Coen Brothers movie in the theatre since O Brother, Where Art Thou? in 2000. Coincidentally, I haven't cared for much of their work since then, either. So the fact that Burn After Reading had me excited enough to get into the theatre seemed a good sign.

Now I'm wishing I'd waited for the DVD.

I didn't hate it as I did The Ladykillers, wasn't indifferent to it as I was to Intolerable Cruelty, and wasn't bored by it as I was to The Man Who Wasn't There. But I didn't love it. Better than Fargo, but it was no Miller's Crossing or Lebowski, films I can revisit again and again and never get bored with. Burn After Reading had its moments. They were just too few and far between.

3/5

NIKKI says:
Wow, about as MEH as you can get. Well, maybe it would have been less meh had it not been a Coen borthers movie of which I expect so much more. But, you know, maybe I shouldn't. The guys haven't really been all that impressive with their original stuff of late. (No Country, of course, was brilliant, even if it fucked the ending of the book.) I don't know -- everything I really don't like about the Coen brothers was all over this movie. I'm not into wide-eyed Fraces McDormand characters who are supposed to perhaps be lovably stupid, but come off as just stupid. I'm not really inot the whole Brad Pitt playing the fool thing. And I didn't really care for the intertwining stories rehash.

This was a failed attempt to pout every cool Coen trait inot one big star-filled movie as if the stars would detrct from the really kinda lame plot and poor execution. It was horrible or anything, but it wasn't anything special either. The guys, it would seem, are out of Lebowskis.

2/5

W Delta Z (aka The Killing Gene)

Director: Tom Shankland
Writer: Clive Bradley
Released: 2007
Cast: Stellan Skarsgård, Selma Blair, Melissa George

NIKKI says:
You know, WAZ started off okay. I thought the banter between Melissa George and Stellan Skarsgaard was geniune and effective. I also thought the Se7en-like energy the film had meant it might be a cut above your standard psychological slasher. Sadly, as the film went on, it lost much of its inital smart, low-key appeal. Which is to say, it went all torture-porn-y and showed way more than it needed to and just moved to extremes I really don't think it needed to go to. I don't think the story needed much alteration, just the depication of the sadist undertakings within it.

In a movie like this, I want to feel haunted by the things we do to each other, by the levels we'll go to when exacting revenge. Stepping away from a film like Se7ev, you certainly feel the grime on you, but that film didn't show us in ultra-graphic detail every cut and kill. Here, we see it all, and we're horribly desesnsitised to the Hostel way of vieweing horror effects in films that the atmosphere of terror is replaced by blatant gore which really isn't that shocking. It's like a movie pissing contest to see who can make the best looking snapping back fingernails. Boring.

Annoying really, because this had potential to be a really classy thriller. They just pushed it all too far and I didn't really care one way of the other in the end. I just wanted it all to stop.

2/5

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills

Directors: Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky
Released: 1996
Cast: Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, Jessie Miskelly, John Mark Byers

Sexy Beast

Director: Jonathan Glazer
Writer: Louis Mellis, David Scinto
Released: 2000
Cast: Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, Ian McShane, Amanda Redman,

STEVE says: Any movie that opens with a song by The Stranglers is going to get a high mark in my book. And that's good news for Sexy Beast. Not that it was a bad movie, it just didn't live up to the hype.

I realized as we started watching it that I knew nothing at all about the movie except that Ben Kingsley was in it. It's been around for eight years and all I've heard was how phenomenal Kingsley was. At what? Well, just being Kingsley, apparently. And he was, certainly. But his Kingsleyness detracted from the rest of the movie. I didn't even know Ray Winstone was in the movie, much less starred in it, such was the Kingsley-mania.

Once you get past that, the movie itself is pretty good, albeit not much more than a neo-noir thriller, a twist on the old "one-last-heist" scenario. I find myself wishing Kingsley hadn't been anywhere near it, as he overshadowed the plot - which I would have otherwise quite dug - altogether. And that's something "Peaches" can't begin to make up for.

2.5/5

Desert's Edge, dir. Rob Lowe (1997)

NIKKI says:

Rob Lowe's debut as a writer and director was not all that great for me. I wanted to like it, because I really like Rob, and he appears to me to be quite smart and informed. But he's clearly not a writer -- or at least at this point in his career he wasn't. But I suppose I don't expect him to be for any other reason that he elected to pick up a pen and write something. He might have given it to Aaron Sorkin or someone to go over because there are a lot of character inconsistencies and character-related plot issues, and the ultimate message left me way cold, especially after seeing what Robert Harmon did with China Lake with a similar setting and running time.

Still, I guess props to Rob for having a hearty go. I just didn't see anything in it that made me want to see more.

The gist is this: You've got a known violent guy and a wannabe actress travelling together as to a photo shoot involving guns. Much of the film is taken up with car ride to the location where the girl alters her personality about five times in order, I assume, for the audience to see the different sides of the guy, played with regular over-the-top-ish-ness by Matt Frewer. One minute the girl wants to blow him, the next she hates his guts and thinks he's a creepy old man, and then she's happy to pose around on the rocks for him pointing a gun at her head. So, who is she and why do I care about her? And he's an asshole, so why do I care about him?

The gun goes off, and Frewer must pick up the pieces. All this time, he's been talking to his lawyer about the situation, and we see flashbacks from all perspectives, even though the whole story is one long flashback of his, so that causes issues.

Ugh -- there's a story in there, but no one really knows what it is. Least of all, it would seem, the one who should -- the writer.

2/5

Someone to Watch Over Me, dir. Ridley Scott (1987)

STEVE says:

More and more, I'm convinced by this project that I've lived with some sort of bizarre Total Recall implanted memory for the first 30-odd years of my life. I had seen Someone to Watch Over Me before, and I remembered it as being a good movie, a suspenseful neo-noir with a dash of sex... Sadly, none of that was to be the case this time around.

In my memory, Mimi Rogers witnesses a murder and Tom Berenger is assigned to protect her. During the course of this, the murderer makes several attempts on her life, as she and Berenger become romantically linked, therefore compromising his ability to protect her. In the broadest sense, that's pretty much what happens. But I remembered nothing about Berenger having a wife and kid, nothing about the underdevelopment of the Berenger/Rogers relationship, and nothing about the drawn out stretches of "drama" between the attempts on Rogers' life. I did remember the final confrontation between Berenger and the killer taking place at a swanky indoor pool, but it turns out that was the inciting incident where Rogers witnesses the killer killing her friend, and Berenger wasn't yet involved, so only half points for remembering that.

Had this been a Movie of the Week, or some direct-to-video thing, it might not have been so bad. Replace Berenger with Michael Nouri (or, you know, not), up the skin quotient, and you got yourself a Cinemax fave. But this is a Ridley Scott movie. This followed Legend, Blade Runner, Alien and The Duellists. Why would he lower himself to this level of late-night melodrama? Sad, really.

1.5/5

NIKKI says:

Amen to all that. It was just lame, and it felt like it was going to be from the opening few minutes. It all felt really Andrew Stevens-y. I was like Steve -- this is Ridley Scott? Is it because people were just so coked up in the '80s? It made very little sense, and the character development was just so poor as to be non-existent. I kinda spent the last two thirds just waiting for it all to be over with. And I'm sorry but whoever cast Mimi Rogers as this irresistible, beautiful femme fatale was doing more coke than anyone else because anyone of sound mind can see Lorraine Bracco is far hotter.

1/5

Hancock, dir. Peter Berg (2008)

STEVE says:

I thought this was going to be a lot lighter than it turned out to be. The trailer would have had be believe that it was a comedy, but it was far from it in the end.

It's a tale of the Reluctant Hero - in this case, the Reluctant Superhero - who eventually embraces his role and ends up saving the day. Plenty of room for hilarious hijinx here, especially with Will Smith. I'm expecting something like Men in Black with a cape. But the humour was spent in Act 1, and it quickly became a tale of redemption and unrequited love between - apparently - gods. Not what I signed up for, but it still managed to grab my attention and hold on to it for the duration.

3/5

The Dark Knight, dir. Christopher Nolan (2008)

STEVE says:

I thought Tim Burton's Batman was dark. I mean, compared to Adam West's camp comedy and Joel Schumacher's neon-loaded glam-fests, of course it was. But Christopher Nolan's new movie makes Burton's look like a little girl.

Even compared to Nolan's own Batman Begins, The Dark Knight has upped the darkness quotient. It's got a whole different feel to it. More realistic. Like it's, for once, not a comic book movie, but a movie set in the real world, of which Batman happens to be a part. Like Heat with a superhero.

But nobody's talking about the production design, or how good Chicago looked doubling for Gotham. It's all the Joker. So let's get this out of the way.

Heath Ledger was good. Very good. Different from the Joker of days past - no César Romero, this guy, and definitely (let's be very clear about this) better than Nicholson's portrayal where he showed up and, basically, gave us Jack Nicholson in white-face. Ledger took the Joker to a whole new level of dark, playing him as an anarchist instead of insane. Deeply psychotic, still, but the anarchist thing was new. So, having said that, let me say this:

Wasn't he really just doing Christian Slater?

Everybody's talking about how he channelled Jack Nicholson, but I just don't see it. First of all, you put those two performances side-by-side, and Nicholson comes off as a try-hard, playing a thug with a grudge - which is all the script really allowed for him, to be fair. But I don't see any Nicholson in Ledger's performance. If anything, it's Slater he's channelling, from Heathers.In that movie, Slater's Jason Dean was a deeply psychotic anarchist who wanted to destroy the school and everyone in it just for the sake of doing it. Ledger's Joker really isn't that far removed. Sure, there were Slater/Nicholson comparisons when Heathers hit the screens, and they weren't inappropriate. But can we please, for the love of God, stop rolling out "Nicholson" every time someone does something brilliant in a movie, huh?

4/5

I Know Who Killed Me, dir. Craig Sivertson (2007)

NIKKI says:

Doesn't that poster look like the cover of a Virginia Andrews novel? That is so Flowers in the Attic over there, and, you know, I probably would have cut this movie some slack had it in fact been based on a Virginia Andrews book. Such heavy-handed imagery, the discovery of -- gasp -- a twin, and some parental mischievery are staples of her books, and thus somewhat enjoyable (okay, maybe when I was 10). And V.C. would never have had Lindsay strip, so we would have been spared that had she been behind this.

Alas, somebody else penned the flick, and his less competent friend directed it. So, instead of being purposefully melodramatic, this is actually just bad. But Lindsay ends up with missing limbs and the reasons behind that have to be seen to be believed. I've been recommending this one at the shop at just that -- it's so bad, you have to watch it. It makes very little sense, it discards characters left and right, it resists explaining anything at all -- like why the piano teacher has limbs hanging from his ceiling -- and it not so much hits you over the head with its red means this and blue means that colour imagery than rapes you with it and then whacks your ravaged body with a blunt shiv.

Oh Lindsay.

1/5

The Deliberate Stranger, dir. Marvin J. Chomsky (1986)

NIKKI says:

You know, I really didn't think Mark Harmon could pull it off. But, even without really showing him being abusive and violent until the end, he was, in this movie, downright freaky. He didn't play it freakily, he didn't channel Ted Bundy in any noticeable way. He just had that look about him, that perfect balance of normal guy and sociopath. He did exactly what he needed to do here -- play it straight, with that edge of terror. Mad props, as the kids say, to Mark Harmon.

Incidentally, my co-worker Steph told me the day we watched this that she planned to go to America and marry Mark Harmon so she could become famous. Yeah, I don't get it either. And, incidentally again, Mark Harmon is married to Pam Dawber and is about to turn 57. What?!

For a three-hour telemovie, this moved surprisingly fast. It steadily crafted the story of this up and coming young politician with a secret life as a mad killer. It resisted exploitation, and genuinely tried to tell the story smartly and interestingly. Granted, there were too many times characters longing wished for Ted's "kind of future" that made us cringe a bit, but for the most part, this was very good. And it was filled with a million and one faces from the '80s that we could sit and point out. That was fun.

Oh, Ted Bundy. Has there ever been a stranger incident of sociopathy? There've been more depraved and weird killers, but did any lead the sort of life Ted did? He's a case unto himself, I reckon. And while Dahmer and Gacy did some horrific things, Ted's the guy who gives me nightmares. I've gone home with cute, smart strangers myself. I've helped them out of jams. Who hasn't? It's because of Ted, too, I think, that I'm convinced everyone has a secret life of crime.

Anyway... good movie. Great work from Mark Harmon, but no awards. I may need to go start a Facebook petition to get Mark a retrospective Emmy nomination for this. Now, there's a crime.

3.5/5

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, dir. Sam Peckinpah (1974)

STEVE says:

You can't beat that for a title, can you?

I saw this movie first about 15 years ago, and remembered it only in bits and pieces. Since we started up our Peckinpah retrospective last month with Convoy, I've been wanting to watch it again, hoping that it was every bit as good as I remembered it. 

According to IMDb: "An American bartender and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a $1 million bounty on the head of a dead gigolo." Yeah, but that's only the set-up. Said bartender, Warren Oates, soon learns that his prostitute girlfriend recently spent three days and three nights with Alfredo Garcia, which only serves to make the idea of decapitating him more appealing. When Oates learns that Garcia is already dead, killed in a car accident, it only makes his job easier - but also goes a long way in making him more despicable. For a while, anyway.

It's strangely crafted: I thought the first half dragged, with all the talk about dreams and finding a better life, but come midpoint I realized its purpose, and understood just how necessary all that talk was. The first half of the movie is the calm before the storm...

3.5