Category: Mystery
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Engaging enough thriller about American journalist in London Stephen Boyd investigating the death of his psychologist and developing a friendship with the psychologist’s daughter, played by Pamela Franklin. Both Boyd and Franklin are excellent; the supporting cast is strong. Unfortunately, the mystery angle isn’t particularly compelling (which almost seems like a conscious choice on the…
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Narrow Margin plays like a TV pilot for Gene Hackman as a crusading (but big mouthed) district attorney. There’s not a lot of depth to the characters and Hyams is never able, even with some great Panavision composition throughout, to make it feel cinematic. Maybe it’s the lack of establishing shots. Most of the film…
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Clockers opens with actual crime scene photos juxtaposed against filmed sequences of a crowd gathering to watch as the police arrive. Lee is dealing with a lot in the film and opening with that startling sequence—against a beautiful song—at least shocks the viewer into paying attention. Though the film is too apolitical to be “about”…
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Harvey Keitel’s performance in Bad Lieutenant reminds me of a supporting actor in a stage play who keeps fidgeting to get the audience’s attention. I wonder if Keitel passes out copies of the DVD to his neocon buddies these days. I have seen the film before, back when I turned eighteen and went through about…
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Midnight Crossing is a terribly written piece of garbage, but there’s some definite potential to it. It takes forever for the potential to show. The movie opens with one of the worst directed, worst written action sequences I can think of. Then it flashes forward to modern day and it’s bad, but sometimes funny. At…
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From the first few minutes—after lengthy opening titles (if only one knew it’d be Mason Daring’s worst score ever)—it’s immediately clear something is terribly wrong with Cold Around the Heart. David Caruso and Kelly Lynch are awful in the opening scene, followed by a terrible cameo from Richard Kind. Except, during Kind’s atrocious appearance—where it…
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So when Trevor Goddard gives a film’s best performance, what can you really say about the film? And calling Illegal in Blue a film is a compliment… but apparently it really was made by a motion picture company. Orion, no less. Two credits stick out. First, Orion. I had no idea they were trying to…
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I could, but will not, get into the idea Presumed Innocent is what studios were making as popular summer entertainment in the nineties. It’s simply to depressing to start that discussion. Instead, I’ll start with the film’s strengths. Even though the second half is very strong–how did Raul Julia not get nominated for this one…
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If you’re ever stuck watching The Pelican Brief, you can amuse yourself wondering if the film would be better had Pakula shot it 1.85 as opposed to Panavision. Pakula shoots it empty Panavision, the right and left sides of the frame empty for easier pan-and-scanning. It’s an inexplicable choice from Pakula, but not as inexplicable…
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I indistinctly remember the last time I saw Dead Again, I didn’t think much of it. I don’t know what I could have been thinking. Until the last act, which slaps a mystery conclusion onto an amnesia thriller without enough padding, the film’s utterly fantastic. Branagh’s direction is great, but the most striking thing initially…
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I always thought Gina Gershon got top billing for Bound–even though she’s only the lead for the first third or so–but it’s actually Jennifer Tilly, which is somewhat more appropriate. I say somewhat because at a certain point, Tilly too loses the spotlight. For a good twenty minutes in the middle, the film belongs to…
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I always thought Gina Gershon got top billing for Bound–even though she’s only the lead for the first third or so–but it’s actually Jennifer Tilly, which is somewhat more appropriate. I say somewhat because at a certain point, Tilly too loses the spotlight. For a good twenty minutes in the middle, the film belongs to…
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I’d forgotten John Guillermin directed Death on the Nile. The opening credits, a static shot of the river, suggest a much different experience then the film delivers–between Guillermin directing, Jack Cardiff shooting it and Anthony Shaffer handling the adaptation. I suppose I should have remembered Shaffer also adapted Christie’s Evil Under the Sun to similar…
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There are two significant problems with Murder on the Orient Express. Unfortunately, both of them are aspects of the film’s genre. Well, one of them is an aspect of the genre and the other is related to the film’s extremely high quality acting. So, neither of them are “problems” in the traditional sense. First, the…
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I don’t know if I can think of a more mild mystery than They Only Kill Their Masters. It’s a solid vehicle for James Garner, giving him a lot of leading man stuff to do and a fair amount of internal conflict. But it’s so slight, so genial, it doesn’t leave much of an impression.…
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F/X2 is very affable. It’s so affable, it encourages one to overlook its major shortcomings. First off, it’s a PG sequel to an R-rated original, which cuts down on the grit (though rated PG-13, the rating’s needlessly inflated with minor nudity). Second, it’s got Toronto standing in for New York. There’s some New York location…
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I think I’ve seen Knight Moves at least twice before. The first time I saw it I stopped watching Night Moves and went back to the video store for this one. What can I say? I had no taste when I was fourteen. Starting it this time, though, I knew what I was getting into…
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I probably read Heaven’s Prisoners, the novel, about eighteen years ago; I don’t remember it. But I’m sure this adaptation is faithful to the events of the novel because this movie is a mess and there’s no good reason for it. The novel can have space for a mystery and a character drama, but–at least…
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Sidney Poitier is the big (Northern) city Black detective, Rod Steiger is the Mississippi redneck sheriff, can they work together to solve a murder? One hopes so. Excellent direction from Jewison, excellent performances from Poitier and Steiger (Steiger even gets too much to do considering it’s Poitier’s movie), meandering Stirling Silliphant script (from the John…
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So back in 1990, ignorant, bigoted book burning fundamentalist Christian psychopath women were screen villains on par with Norman Bates (by some accounts). Now they’re presidential candidates. Misery actually owes quite a bit, in its third act, to Psycho. Reiner is no Hitchcock and he doesn’t try to be. His success, directing the film, has…
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I Come with the Rain is a strange one. I doubt I can even give away how weird without spoiling the… surprise (it’s one of the two surprises to take the problematic but brilliantly made–not shot, bad DV–picture into the dumps). But there’s enough weirdness without spoiling. First and foremost… the movie’s in English. There’s…
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One joke–just to start. One. Was anti-Semitism a requirement for appearing in Edge of Darkness? Ok. I’m done. Mel’s return to the screen (pause–people actually saw Signs) tries hard to not be the return of a movie star. He’s got a lot of scars (the two on his forehead, are those really his?) and he’s…
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Watching “Damages,” it was always surprising to me what a good actor Timothy Olyphant has turned out to be. Before it, all I’d really seen him in (albeit a while ago) was Scream 2 and he’s absolutely terrible in that one. In A Perfect Getaway, he proves able to translate his ability into a more…
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At some point during this response, I’m going to say nice things about Eva Mendes. Just a warning. I used to hate on CG, starting in around 1996 and ending about six years later, when I just gave up caring. It wasn’t ever going to stop and it had gotten to a point where there…
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Oh, good grief. The Prestige is in IMDb’s top 250 movies? It’s so bad, I’m actually going to say something nice about Christopher Nolan in a second here. I’ve never heard of source novelist Christopher Priest and no one I know has ever mentioned him to me, so I’m guessing he’s pretty godawful, which probably…
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Want to see an amazing, can’t-believe-I-haven’t-heard-of-him performance by Eion Bailey? See Mindhunters. Want to see a goofy, affable Val Kilmer performance (maybe the first of its kind since Real Genius)? See Mindhunters. Want to see Christian Slater’s possibly best performance since Pump Up the Volume? See Mindhunters. Want to see a terrible Jonny Lee Miller…
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Of all the crap Millennium Films has released theatrically, it’s shameful they let Streets of Blood go straight to DVD. Sure, there’s an absolutely ludicrous Sharon Stone (playing a faded Southern belle Ph.D., the worst Ph.D. casting since Will Smith), but it’s a solid cop thriller slash character study slash Katrina exploitation film. It’s even…
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Someone read the script to Moscow Zero and wanted to direct it? I guess given the director goes by an alias (Luna) instead of her name–she’s like the female, Spanish McG or something–it should be a surprise. What is a surprise is the presence of Val Kilmer and Rade Serbedzija in this piece of nonsense.…
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I spent a lot of Whiteout wondering why Dominic Sena, whose first film is Kalifornia, didn’t go crazy stylizing the film. It’s relatively stylized as thrillers go, but it’s not at all extreme. And it didn’t even occur to me until the last shot of the film, which lots of people probably don’t have the…
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I’m a little surprised Donna Summer did the theme song for The Deep, seeing as how she’s black and, according to The Deep, every black person is a villain of some kind or another. Even with his blond locks, I’ve never thought of Nick Nolte as particularly aryan (maybe because his eyes are so brown),…
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