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

The Lookout, dir. Scott Frank (2007)

NIKKI says:
The pacing of this one stuck out the most. It very steadily tells its story, and I think it's testament to how well-written parts of it are that the pace doesn't drag it down.

It's quite slow getting going, but it's character driven, and perhaps atmosphere driven, that it works to build this dark world in which these dark people move about. The story isn't especially compelling, but the mood of the piece is at times.

If that makes sense...

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is turning into Heath Ledger more and more with each film. Not only does he look like Heath, he's developing Heath's intensity. He's turning into a smart actor, and I enjoy watching him in most things.

So, the movie... Chris has a car smash that kills or severely injures his best friends. Following the accident, his brain is fucked up and he can't remember things properly, so writes down everything in his life in a little notebook. He can't connect with people, and lives with his blind friend, Jeff Daniels, while working as a bank janitor.

Chris's job makes him the target for a group of bank robbers. They cajole him into assisting with their robbery plans by taking him in, offering him friendship, and making him fall for a girl. He realises the benefits of the extra cash and goes along with the scam. But all, say it with me, is not as it seems...

It's a movie about a guy who deals with a poor decision by making poor decisions. It's about a lack of connection, about attempts made to steer straight. I enjoyed it, though I didn't love it. One of my main concerns was how movie-like the final reel was, with the shootouts and things. Something about those crisp, choreographed battle scenes just distracted me from the story.

What am I trying to say? The dude with the glasses, the all-out killing machine -- he only exists in movies. Look at Dog Day Afternoon -- now that's more realistic. These caricatures of evil men don't work for me -- even Matthew Goode's character was over the top and unrealistic. It was his connection to Lukas Haas in terms of his look and actions here that made me think of Brick. This was far more accomplished than Brick, but suffered from some cheesy bad guys.

Still, smart enough and dark enough to be enjoyable.

3/5

Slow Burn, dir. Wayne Beach (2005)

STEVE says:
This was a good-but-not-great Noirish thriller whose only failing, as far as I'm concerned, is that it relied too heavily on the Usual Suspects/Keyser Soze gimmick with its Danny Luden character.

This is one of those movies where red herrings abound, so when it's pushing you too far in one direction, you can be sure it's the wrong one. Usual Suspects never falls into that trap because the film posits that Keyser Soze might not even exist in reality, so you're never sitting there trying to guess which one of the gang is hiding his identity. With Slow Burn, it's a constant shell-game, where each new lead points to a different character. And when it starts pointing too insistently, you instinctively start looking elsewhere. The twist-upon-twist-upon-twist ending was a bit much, I'm sitting there thinking, "End already!" but it was solid enough to keep me interested for the duration, even though we figured out pretty early what was going on.

None of which means that it deserves the caning it's receiving over there at RottenTomatoes.com.

The critics are just ripping Slow Burn to shreds, which is unfortunate and unfair. It's not like it's trying to bring anything new to the thriller table; it's taking the conventions of the genre and using them as necessary. Does that merit a 12%? I think not.

3/5

NIKKI says:
You know, I never once thought of The Usual Suspects while watching this movie. Looking back, I can see that movie's influence all over this one. Still, I was happy with the goings on. I thought figuring out LL Cool J was the killer and then realising he wasn't then thinking he was again was actually fun.

There were bits and pieces here that I didn't like. Mainly that the Assistant DA would even think for two seconds that her DA boyfriend (Ray) would believe her story for a second. I'm questioning, too, the fact that Ray never once suspected her of anything during the months she was seeing someone else.

So, yeah, if you pulled a thread, the whole thing might unravel. I still liked it. Perhaps I just liked watching Ray face off against LL? But who wouldn't like that? I also loved the movie's soundtrack. Some really great soul tunes in this one.

So, did you notice how Ray Liotta aged badly in his 40s, and now seems to be aging REALLY well in his 50s? I said to Steve in the movie that Ray would be approaching 50, as all my crushes from the early '90s seem to be, and here I find Ray's 53! He looks 40 in this movie. Svelte, healthy, delish.

There's a point right there.

3/5

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, dir. Sidney Lumet (2007)

NIKKI says:
Never has a film directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman promised so much and delivered so little. Although, admittedly, I appear to be on my own with this, as the film is receiving positive reviews all over town.

I just didn't care. I started caring because the story started out so interesting -- brothers in need of money, one seemingly well-to-do, the other a hopeless fuck-up, plan to rob their parents' jewellery store. Things go wrong, and our story starts.

But as it played out, I found myself less and less interested in where these down and dirty lives ended up. I found myself only interested in just where Ethan Hawke was going to take his character, acting-wise. His performance was extraordinary, and just made me think how much I have missed him in movies. This was the first time, I think since Tod Anderson, that I've genuinely been enthralled watching him. Usually, he seems a bit bored. Here, he appeared to care a bit more.

I'm so sad that I didn't. I felt the movie just ached with melodrama -- and not the good kind. This was just sad people doing sad things. And I realise Phillip Seymour was really at the end of his rope, but how he ends up dealing with it just didn't ring true to me.

A good set-up, but ultimately disappointing.

2.5/5

Mike's Murder, dir. James Bridges (1984)

NIKKI says:
I don't really know what I thought of this one. It wasn't at all what I was expecting, though why I was expecting something akin to Missing with Jack Lemmon I just don't know.

It's one of those films from the early '80s that looks suspiciously like a TV movie. I can't imagine this went to cinemas. It's very Movie-of-the-Week.

Basically, Betty reunited with her tennis coach boyfriend after he becomes involved in some drug deals gone bad. Betty wants to rekindle their old flame knowing little about his drug issues. He stands her up and ends up dead. Not content to take his disappearance lying down, she tries to figure out what happened. She ends up mixing with some fairly dangerous dudes.

I guess the intrigue here is wrapped up in this young, naive woman infiltrating big-city drug bosses. There's an element of excitement there, but I found much of this film unrealistic and I really didn't care for Mike all that much in the first place. I wanted to know why Betty was risking so much to solve his murder and yet he did so very little for her. Not fair, perhaps? Well, not entirely. But in order for me to believe she would take such steps, I needed a bit more of a reason to care for Mike.

The film suffered, too, from Over-80s-ness with weird clothes and hair and tennis coaches and cabana boys in tight shorts with absolutely no sense they look ridiculous. But I can handle that. Everything else? Mmm, I don't know. Not great, this one.

2/5

The Long Goodbye, dir. Robert Altman (1973)

STEVE says:
I know I'm alone on this, but I think Elliot Gould is my favorite Marlowe. He may not be the best incarnation of the literary Marlowe (in my opinion, it's Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet), but that doesn't bother me so much, as The Long Goodbye is an update of the story, set in 1973 instead of the novel's 50s.

Marlowe, too, is an update of the smart-aleck PI made legendary by Bogart in The Big Sleep. Mumbling, bemused, talking to himself a great deal of the time, he's still as out-of-place as he's ever been, no matter who plays him.

And it's a Robert Altman film, so you've got to expect something different. It's not a straight adaptation of the book - half the characters have been dropped, a gangster added, a murder changed to a suicide and the ending completely changed - but it works.

The Long Goodbye is not a classic film noir, it's a take-off on films of that type, a satire of Hollywood and its stereotypes. I happen to love that sort of thing. For everybody else, I guess there's always vanilla.

4/5

Nikki did not view.