Letterboxd — Your life in film

Another inspirational teacher movie set at a high school, another drably shot movie that operates on technical competency without coming up with a way to wow our eyes. But wait, what Stand and Deliver has got going for it is the impeccable and patient performance of Edward James Olmos… so I guess we don’t need any fancy cinematic tricks this time. His Jaime Escalante math teacher went into an L.A. inner city school, hooked these kids attention with humor and…

Morgan Freeman is stormy and mesmerizing to watch; the writing and directing (by John G. Avildsen) is shamelessly manipulative. True story of the very intractable Joe Clark, a principal who transformed gang battlegrounds of an urban high school into a passing literacy facility. Freeman is a cross between Malcolm X, Dirty Harry and Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, belittling troubled students and undermining faculty. There is a point where the fascism of Clark’s conduct goes too far but the movie wants to…

I have never liked Godzilla movies and have found almost all of them to be forgettable an hour after I’ve seen them. But if I have a choice to ever revisit one of them, it will be for this British knock-off called Gorgo which takes a cue from King Kong more than from its Japanese monster pedigree. The monster comes to shore highlighted by a backdrop of glistening sea images. Somehow, yes, the movie is pretty and glorious, as if…

Wes Craven directed the taut Red Eye and brought it in at 85 minutes. Just a nimble, diverting, unpretentious little number that many other lesser directors, I imagine, would have found a way to bloat it to 100+ minutes. This is a thriller that establishes things quickly, that has its battle of wits, that has its heroine running in a race against the clock, that has its villain certain he doesn’t waste any time to get his menacing point across.…

Inferior storywise and doesn’t have the demented filmmaking skill of the original. So I ask: What is the point of Hollywood doing remakes if there is not even a single intent of improving upon at least one facet. Not even an effort to outdo the original in one particular element. Just contentment of doing the bare-bones minimum facsimile. At least attempt to outdo the original in at least one department! Attempt it!

Robocop starts out with a snappy Samuel L.…

Ultraviolence, circa 1987 at the cinemas. In the projected future, Detroit is at the bottom of the barrel for dystopian wreckage in the United States (excellent guess!). Yet the Omni Consumer corporation is headed there, as if any wrongdoing would never be investigated because the Feds don’t even want to go to Detroit. Omni specializes tactically in optimizing police, security, school and other programs that should be run by the state but, in this future, are not. Ronny Cox, as…

A smart stupid movie. Young military men and women getting majorly abused and maimed at training camp, then getting blasted into outer space, docking at a faraway planet made of desert and rock, to kill giant bugs. That the mother arachnids shoot spores made of hatching bugs and atomic energy at Earth is, well, a deus ex machina. The prevalent point is watching youngsters give up their freedom to join the collective union of the military in order to serve…

I put on the 4-hour 40-minute version. Many disaffected people in the future year of 1999, but we follow the moseying journey of Claire as she believes she can be of service to someone or something or mankind. No more hang-outs with art hipsters for her, I guess. Now the big problem with the film that I realized immediately is that the person who plays Claire, which would be Solveig Dommartin, is an uninteresting actress.

I found Dommartin to be…

I strongly admire the opening thirty or so shots of this film. Reminded me how films as diverse as “The Master” (2012), “Ex Machina” (2015) or “Tár” (2022) had openings with thirty shots or so of immersive and carefully composed mise-en-scén. Wim Wenders, the director of Perfect Days, tells us everything we need to know about this man in front of us, he gives us a feeling about him, he makes a statement about him in how he chooses to…

Are there many thrillers as written as complex yet air-tight as 1985’s Witness? Answer: Not many.

Cop thriller melodrama, with Harrison Ford going into Amish country to evade department corruption and also serve as protector to Kelly McGillis and son Lukas Haas. It has a one-of-a-kind suspense climax inside a corn silo that’s thrilling because it is so fast-triggering and immediate.

Before we get there, the sloppy manners cop John Book is imprudent with Amish woman Rachel who wants nothing…

If you were to ask me who is the most beautiful woman in the world, whom does it for me, I’m gonna have to tell you: Ashley Judd. Those eyes. Those lips. That hair. That crinkly sweet disposition of hers.

In the 1999 brains-out-the-door thriller Double Jeopardy, Ashley looks beautiful while making love to her husband (well duh, Sean!). Ashley looks beautiful while covered in blood on her yacht (the blood that could be her husband’s). Ashley looks beautiful when…

Father and daughter contrived to be opposing attorneys in a case involving a corrupt automobile corporation that knew it had malfunctioning parts that could combust into fire, and hide the fact they found it cheaper to pay millions in litigations rather than correct their issues. Gene Hackman, longtime the activist attorney, is the father. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, a conservator corporate lawyer representing the auto manufacturer, is the daughter. From the beginning, Hackman is righteous for the cause but it is…