AWN Blogs

This is the pimp daddy of blaxploitation flicks. It was a huge box office hit and I can see how it has influenced a lot of rap artists. Just out of jail after serving five years, Goldie (Max Julien, HOW TO BE A PLAYER) was a car thief and thug for The Fatman (George Murdock, STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER). Now free, he decides to become the richest pimp in Oakland.

Goldie uses his new wealth to buy his mom (Juanita Moore, DISNEY’S THE KID) a nice house, but his brother Olinga (Roger E. Mosley, TV’s MAGNIUM P.I.) is trying to clean up the streets and doesn’t approve of his brother’s pimpin’ ways. Moreover, Goldie can’t get a break from the man in the form of corrupt cops Hank (Don Gordon, BULLITT) and Jed (William Watson, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT) as well as The Fatman, who is on his case to get back into drug dealing and car stealin’. Playing Goldie’s faithful sidekick is Richard Pryor as Slim.

Director Roland Emmerich likes to destroy things in his films. He likes to do so in fun popcorn flicks, like he did in STARGATE and INDEPENDENCE DAY. I haven’t seen his GODZILLA, but I know he destroyed things (almost his career I think). But when he tries to get serious, we get the awful THE PATRIOT (aka BRAVEHEART IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR).

With THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, Emmerich takes on the serious topic of global warming, which allows him to destroy things with natural disasters this time. The film isn’t a message film, but if it makes at least one person read some real science about global warming than it was worth it. So what it comes down to is, if you like to see things get destroyed than you’ll like this film.

I saw Adrian Lyne’s 1997 LOLITA before I saw Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 version. It’s amazing how the relatively same plot and story could be told in too starkly different ways. Lyne’s is a dark, tragic drama while Kubrick’s is a satirical, dark comedy.

Prof. Humbert Humbert (James Mason, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH) decides to take a room at the home of Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters, A PLACE IN THE SUN) after he catches a glimpse of her daughter Lolita (Sue Lyon, THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA), claiming it was Mrs. Haze’s offer of cherry pie that persuaded him to stay. The film is filled with sly double entendres. And of course no one delivers them better than Peter Sellers (BEING THERE) who plays Clare Quilty, a TV writer who had a brief fling with Mrs. Haze, but only remembers Lolita.

Director John Boorman is best down for DELIVERENCE, which this film couldn’t be more different from. The film is a sentimental look at the young life of Bill Rowen (Sebastian Rice-Edwards, only film performance), who lived in London during the German Blitz with his eccentric parents Grace (Sarah Miles, TV’s QUEENIE) and Clive (David Hayman, THE TAILOR OF PANAMA), nymphomaniac teenage sister Dawn (Sammi Davis, FOUR ROOMS) and little sister Sue (Geraldine Muir, JUST ASK FOR DIAMOND).

The film works because it takes the child’s point of view about the air raids, which, to Bill, are a blast. Based on Boorman’s own experiences, the film is rich with detail, if not a little idealistic and sentimental at times. It really captures the true sense of being a kid at the time and how being young at any time in history is relatively the same.

The latest telling of the Alamo tale had a host of strikes against it going into theaters. First, it was supposed to star Russell Crowe and be directed by Ron Howard, but they stepped down from the picture after Disney wouldn’t allow Howard to make this his SAVING PRIVATE RYAN with all the blood and gore he could muster. So Disney brought in THE ROOKIE director John Lee Hancock to craft a PG-13 version of the tale. With a budget of $95 million and a box office gross of only $22 million, you think Disney would have been better off letting Howard make his more adult version?

Come on, I bet you a lot of teens or even 20-somethings won’t even know whom William Travis is. This isn’t a tale for the mall crowd. In the end, the Hancock film still deals with the real men that participated in the story and not the legends that surround them.

Scene: Hollywood execs sitting in a big office. One turns to the other. "Hey, let's make a film where a serial killer plans out elaborate ways to kill people, taunting the police along the way." Second exec, "I don't know, what's the twist." First exec, "It's set in Canada." Second exec, "Brilliant… and we can film it there too." Brilliant?

I'm pretty much a sucker for detective stories. I like mysteries. But the formula is getting old. When I first saw the trailer for this film and saw Angelina Jolie lying in the grave, I wanted to vomit. Grand dramatic gestures by cops are so lame. RED DRAGON nailed how to show a detective getting into the mind of the killer in my book. Additionally, TAKING LIVES throws common sense out the window. Time and time again, the contrivances of the plot make you shake your head.

This poetic Buddhist story has a lot to say about life and death, sin and redemption and love. The metaphor of the changing season representing the stages of life isn't a revolutionary artistic touch, but director Ki-duk Kim does it with original and breathtaking beauty.

Each season represents a different section in the life of the film’s characters. An old monk (Yeong-su Oh, LITTLE MONK) lives on a small floating house in a lake in the mountains. He is in care of a young boy (Jong-ho Kim, film debut) who he teaches metaphorical lessons about life and death. When the boy becomes a teen (Jae-kyeong Seo, RESURRECTION OF THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL), a young sick girl (Yeo-jin Ha, film debut) comes into the care of the monk. The teenage apprentice is quickly smitten by the girl. What happens next I will leave as a surprise. But I will say, the film deals with the issues of rebellion, temptation and redemption.

This film chronicles the faltering life of once big-time PR man Eli Wurman (Al Pacino, ANGELS IN AMERICA). He only has one more client – Cary Launer (Ryan O’Neal, LOVE STORY), an aging star who parties like a 20-year-old with women in their twenties. One of Eli’s less glamorous duties is to cover up Launer’s indiscretions like bailing out actress Jilli Hopper (Tea Leoni, FAMILY MAN) from jail.

Eli is falling apart. He is taking who knows how many prescription and illegal drugs. His doctor and friend Sandy (Robert Klein, TWO WEEKS NOTICE) is worried about him and so is his little brother’s widow Victoria (Kim Basinger, 8 MILE), who has come to New York to convince him to move down South with her again. In the midst of all of the mayhem, Eli is trying to put together a fundraiser for immigrants where he’s trying to get high-profile businessman Elliot Sharansky (Richard Schiff, TV’s THE WEST WING) and civil rights leader Rev. Lyle Blunt (Bill Nunn, SPIDER-MAN) to appear together.

It is a testament to Julianne Moore’s (THE HOURS) talent that I didn’t realize just how badly written her character was until close to the end of the film. She plays straight-laced divorce lawyer Audrey Woods who loses her first case to disheveled attorney Daniel Rafferty (Pierce Bronson, THE TAILOR OF PANAMA).

The film is an “opposites attract”/”free-spirit teaches anal person to learn how to love” type film. All the characters are one-dimensional and rarely display any real human emotions or logic. Plus the plot doesn’t seem to know what it wants. Woods and Rafferty get drunk and then hook up, which Woods is ashamed of and then later they get drunk, in Ireland of all places, and get married. (I am giving no more away than the trailer did). If the drunk hook-up is lame than the drunk marriage is pathetic.

The Coen Bros. humor is very dry. Sometimes you don’t know if you’re supposed to be laughing or not. This works in films like FARGO, but in a film like THE LADYKILLERS, which is clearly a comedy, it really doesn’t work. This film falls into the canon of Coen somewhere along with RAISING ARIZONA, which I am not a super fan.

This film is a remake of a far better Alec Guiness comedy that also starred Peter Sellers. Professor G.H. Dorr (Tom Hanks, THE ‘BURBS) is a ringleader of a heist team that is trying to rob a riverboat gambling company. He takes a room at the house of Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall, SOUL FOOD), a highly religious woman who complains to Sheriff Wyner (George Wallace, LITTLE NICKY) on a regular basis about the local youth playing that hippity-hop music too loudly. Mrs. Munson’s house will allow Dorr and his cronies to tunnel into the riverboat’s shoreline money room and steal the cash. The gang consists of foul-mouthed inside man Gawain MacSam (Marlon Wayans, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM), special effects specialist and explosives man Garth Pancake (J.K. Simmons, SPIDER-MAN), tactical master and silent assassin The General (Tzi Ma, THE QUIET AMERICAN) and dimwitted, failed football player and the gang’s muscle Lump Hudson (Ryan Hurst, REMEMBER THE TITANS).

This film is the fourth in the popular Japanese horror series and it is the best. Throughout the series, the main problem has been that there isn’t a clear central character to care about. Here we have Kyoko Harase (Noriko Sakai, narrator of POKEMON: PICHU AND PIKACHU), a horror movie actress who visits the cursed house of the previous films to do a documentary. As in the other films, the curse of Kayako (Takako Fuji) and her son Toshio (Yuya Ozeki) tracks down all that have contact with the house. However, this time they seem to be toying with Kyoko, who is pregnant.

As part of the series, this film does the best job of making us care about a character who is being hunted by the curse. However, the film still lacks any fight by the characters. They all seem like helpless fodder. The inactivity of the characters gets frustrating. If they make a fifth JU-ON, I’d like to see somebody try to figure out the curse and stop it.

In no way am I saying its as emotional wrenching or as intellectually stimulating, but this film reminded me of IRREVERSIBLE. Maybe it was the tone and it definitely has the power to make you squirm.

Director Marina de Van (UNDER THE SAND) plays the lead role of Esther, a self-loathing woman, who after having an accident that severely cuts her leg becomes obsessed with self-mutilation. The film builds slowly developing Esther’s psychology. Her friend Sandrine (Lea Drucker, SHOOTING STARS) and her boyfriend Vincent (Laurent Lucas, WITH A FRIEND LIKE HARRY) become quickly concerned with her dangerous behavior.

The film does a wonderful job of portraying Esther’s uncontrollable obsession. It’s amazing how the film makes you tense just by having Esther alone, because we know how dangerous she can be to herself. Eventually, she breaks with reality and takes the self-mutilation to an unimaginable level. There is a scene in this film that makes you feel so uncomfortable just like IRREVERSIBLE’s infamous rape scene. The only thing I wish the film had done more was explain this next step more. Psychologically I’m not sure what the film is trying to say.