Seven Pounds

Director: Gabriele Muccino
Writer: Grant Nieporte
Released: 2008
Cast: Will Smith, Rosario Dawson, Woody Harrelson, Barry Pepper

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

Kicking and Screaming

Director: Noah Baumbach
Writer: Noah Baumbach
Released: 1995
Cast: Josh Hamilton, Chris Eigeman, Carlos Jacott, Jason Wiles, Olivia d'Abo, Parker Posey, Carla Buono

St. Elmo's Fire

Director: Joel Schumacher
Writers: Joel Schumacher, Carl Kurlander
Released: 1985
Cast: Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Mare Winningham

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

Easy Rider

Director: Dennis Hopper
Writers: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Terry Southern
Released: 1969
Cast: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

Director: David Lynch
Writers: David Lynch, Robert Engels
Released: 1992
Cast: Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, Moira Kelly, Dana Ashbrook, James Marshall, Chris Isaak, Kyle MacLachlan

Apocalypto

Director: Mel Gibson
Writer: Mel Gibson, Farhad Safinia
Released: 2006
Cast: Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernández, Gerardo Taracena, Raoul Trujillo

Who's That Knocking at My Door?

Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Martin Scorsese
Released: 1967
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Zina Bethune

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

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Robert Getchell
Released: 1974
Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Alfred Lutter, Kris Kristofferson, Diane Ladd, Harvey Keitel

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

Fallen

Director: Gregory Hoblit
Writer: Nicholas Kazan
Released: 1998
Cast: Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, Embeth Davidtz, James Gandolfini, Elias Koteas

Birthday Boy

Director: Sejong Park
Writer: Sejong Park
Release: 2004
Cast: Joshua Ahn

Hope Floats

Director: Forrest Whitaker
Writer: Steven Rogers
Released: 1998
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Harry Connick Jr., Gena Rowlands, Mae Whitman, Michael Paré

Yella

Director: Christian Petzold
Writers: Simone Bär, Christian Petzold
Released: 2007
Cast: Nina Hoss, Devid Striesow, Hinnerk Schönemann

STEVE says: Okay. First: Not a bad movie. Beautifully shot, well-acted. Somehow managed to make corporate accounting, if not interesting, at least a source of intrigue. But by the 12-minute mark, I could see where it was all going. Am I the only person who's seen Carnival of Souls?

As the movie went on, it became less a question of What's Happening? and more How Will These Events Lead to the Inevitable Conclusion?

As a movie on its own, it probably deserves a higher rating, but it was hard to buy into the suspense when I couldn't get Carnival of Souls out of my head, so it's losing some points there.

2.5/5

The Lottery

Director: Larry Yust
Writer: Larry Yust
Released: 1969
Cast: Olive Dunbar, William Benedict, William Fawcett, Joe Howarth

STEVE says: There's something to be said for a film that manages to be suspenseful and shocking, even though it has one of the most famous endings in literary history.

I tried to watch this as someone who wasn't familiar with the story, and it wasn't easy. Like the last ten minutes of The Wicker Man, where you just know Edward Woodward is going to be burned alive, but you're still waiting for someone to swoop in and rescue him - no matter how many times you've seen the movie. It was a lot like that. But I was able to appreciate the lead-up a lot more, knowing how it was going to turn out. Yust (and Shirley Jackson, it must be said) highlights the banality of evil before the audience is even aware that evil is in the picture. Genius.

After watching this short film, I'm reminded of the woman in Fahrenheit 9/11 who was pro-war until her son was killed. In The Lottery, Tessie Hutchinson - like everyone else in the town - is all for the lottery, until it affects her personally. Then, suddenly, "It isn't fair!" Considering "The Lottery" was published in 1948, this short was made in 1969, and the themes were still relevant in 2004... Well, "the more things change", I guess...

3.5/5

NIKKI says:
There's something about old farm-lookin' dudes from the backwoods that just creeps me out. And this has lots of 'em. But that's not the point of the story... so it is a famous story, and it's still as scary as it ever was. Amazing how after so many years and so many retellings you still sit there in shock that the townspeople are actually going to go through with the ritual. Maybe it's because after all those retellings, there's still no actual reason why they do it.

Steve and I decided the themes in the story have much to do with conscription and sending kids off to war. We openly and randomly choose names from a hat and send people to war to be killed. This is a simplified exploration of that very strange practice that, when laid out in this way, just seems insane. Like so many things, I guess.

3.5/5

Smart People

Director: Noam Murro
Writer: Mark Poirier
Released: 2008
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Thomas Haden Church, Ellen Page

NIKKI says: How does Hollywood let an audience know characters are smart? By having them use big or obscure words. Dennis Quaid knows the meaning of the word "eft" -- he must be a genius.

I'm really starting to hate Hollywood's idea of the "smart person". Seems those of us who might be book-schooled a bit more than the rest of the world also need to be repressed and smart-assy, and entirely unable to have any fun.

Take this movie... Dennis Quaid is the smartest professor in the world and he just snaps at the lower class, and thinks he's just so above everyone. His daughter is the same way -- super-smart, and a super-bitch, mean to people for no reason because life is too short to deal with, well, anyone else. Even Sarah Jessica Parker gets the treatment here -- she's smart, too, and a doctor no less, and you can tell from her limp hair, make-up-less face, and desire to sneak a cigarette when she's upset that she's also horribly repressed.

Who does it take to come into the fold and make everyone's lives happy again? A dope-smoking sponge, without any education whatsoever. If only life were so simple.

I found myself surprised at many turns in the story, which I put down to poor development. I didn't get a sense of why Sarah Jessica and Dennis Quaid even had their affair. I didn't get what prompted Juno to kiss Ned. And just for the life of me I don't understand the drama at the end when Sarah Jessica thinks she's pregnant. Why did she suddenly become a cruel bitch? She went into the affair knowing this man was utterly self-involved. So, why am I shocked when she finds out he's still that way later on?

No, the more I think about it, the less this worked for me. It's another one of those Squid and the Whale type movies where we're supposed to think all involved are on a higher plain but they just go around acting like assholes for no real, deep reasons.

2/5

Tootsie

Director: Sydney Pollack
Writers: Murray Schisgal, Larry Gelbart
Released: 1982
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, Bill Murray, Charles Durning

NIKKI says: I need someone to explain to me the infatuation the world seems to have with this movie! I had never seen it -- something about Dustin Hoffman in that horrible outfit just turned me off. I own it on video, but had never actually sat down to watch it. You know, I've seen so many clips from award shows and film retrospective programs that I felt like I'd seen it anyway.

Well, I was in the mood for old school comedy, and I went with this. Oh my god, I cannot believe how bad the film is. Worse, I can't get over how revered it is in the film world. An American Comedy Classic, this is supposed to be. But it's not -- it's a badly plotted, poorly developed, unrealistic, sexist waste of two hours. And what's worse is that is postures itself as the complete opposite.

It might be easy to fall back on, "it was the time", but I just don't see how this movie with a man parading as a woman on a TV set full of sexist males and showing them how to stand up for themselves can rightly call itself female empowerment film in an age where we had Norma Rae and Silkwood. It's offensive that we need this MAN to stand up for women on the set -- and that the man is himself an insufferable jerk. He was a jerk in the beginning and I don't really think he changed all that much at the end. And it was never fully realised as far as why he fell in love with Jessica Lange, other than the shape of her ass. She was sweet, but he was dressed as an old woman the whole time they were together. And then she just goes off with him at the end? She doesn't even know him! And what she does know is that he's a massive liar who took extreme advantage of her.

And the relationship between Lange and Tootsie was so hokey and unrealistic. I've got girlfriends, really close ones that I've shared some fairly intimate moments with -- but never, ever, ever have I licked cake mix off their fingers. Any girl I'd do that to, I'd be fucking later. You know? The movie's idea of female connection is devastatingly misguided.

Oh, so much I hated about this. Hoffman's apparently convincing outfit was probably the most bothersome thing. He looks like man in drag. The voice, the walk -- it's just ridiculous and not at all funny. This is not an American Comedy Classic. It's not a female empowerment film. It probably meant well, but it just went about everything the wrong way. What does Michael learn in the end? What lesson did he really learn? And how was I supposed to feel sympathy for him when the one character he was developed as connecting with (Teri Garr) he treated like stupid child? He just fucked her to get out of an embarrassing situation and then she fell for him and then she was the ditz he had to avoid. Where's the female empowerment there?

That's it -- I'm done with this one. Terrible film. Embarrassing.

1/5

STEVE says: Watching Tootsie again for the first time in decades was like running in to an old high school friend, only to learn that he's a dick - and worse, always has been.

I remembered liking this movie! I hated the implication that Hoffman hooks up with Jessica Lange in the end (I wanted him to get together with Teri Garr), but remembered it fondly as a classic. Looking at it now, I can see just how simplistic and condescending it is.

Tootsie is supposed to be a female-empowerment flick, but using a man dressed as a woman to empower females seems kind of backwards. Reminds me of a quote from Twin Peaks: "Using a stuffed animal to represent an endangered species as an ecological protest constitutes the supreme incongruity." And that's what's going on here. I cannot understand the accolades this film received - indeed, still receives. It's ridiculous and embarrassing.

1/5

Days of Wine and Roses

Director: Blake Edwards
Writer: JP Miller
Released: 1962
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Charles Bickford, Jack Klugman

NIKKI says: You know, the humour wasn't lost on me that I watched this movie with a hangover. In the beginning, too, I understood the lure of alcohol for these people; the use of it as a means of escape, of obtaining highs, of freeing oneself of inhibitions and fears. Life looks more fun when all of those things come together. And bourbon just tastes so good.

But like all seedy relationships, all is not what it seems. There is a downside. And this movie is about that downside. So much so that it's somewhat of an advertisement for Alcoholics Anonymous, and an absolute smear campaign against alcohol in general. When the film shifts from a story about two people losing control to this other thing involving long monologues about the dangers of alcohol and what it can do to people it loses much of its appeal. Perhaps it's the era, but subtle this film is not.

It's a pity, too, because everything else is right where it needs to be. The acting is especially brilliant. Jack Lemmon just mesmerises me. I don't know how he does it. The transitions here from happy-go-lucky workman to violent drunk to crazed DT-sufferer to sober father are really something to see. He is a fascinating performer. His energy kept me going through the preachier parts of the movie.

I was disappointed in the end, leaving Lee Remick with the scarlet letter firmly stuck to her of woman to drag Jack down. Is the film about the dangers of alcohol, or women? There's even a point in this film where a link is made between women and addictive personalities, and that spun me out a bit. The movie goes all PC, and then just pulls right back and goes, nope, Lee Remick can stay on the downward path -- dirty femme-ale. Well...

So, I'm glad I watched it. It's truly one of the best acted films I've seen. But, really, it's far too preachy and simplistic to really feel like a true comment on alcoholism. The Lost Weekend is the movie for that.

2/5