Taxi Driver (review)
Was *Taxi Driver* more disturbing, or less disturbing, before its unpleasant truths shifted into the real world?
crime
GoodFellas movie review: king of the hill
This is the best mob movie ever made.
Croupier movie review: zen and the art of dealing
The 1998 British film Croupier, only now getting a limited American release, was made well before the recent Reindeer Games, but comparing them is too delicious an opportunity to bash Hollywood to let pass by. Both have the same conceit of their cores: a Christmas Eve casino heist. In Hollywood’s eyes, this is a chance to show us Santas with machine guns running amuck, and not much else. In the hands of legendary British director Mike Hodges, who made the 1971 classic Get Carter, and equally legendary screenwriter Paul Mayersberg, who wrote The Man Who Fell to Earth, it becomes a spare, seductive, almost novelistic suspense drama in which the biggest crime is its protagonist’s misunderstanding of himself.
Run Lola Run (Lola rennt) movie review: game over
Writer/director Tom Tykwer captures all of GenX’s best qualities — energy, resourcefulness, independence — and he does so in the shared visual vernacular of Xers: music videos, video games, and television.
Go (review)
So, Go’s three interconnected tales follow a diverse group of Los Angeles twentysomethings as their lives bang up against one another in a scenario that’s the 90s in a nutshell, from the Xer point of view: sex and danger that’s both exciting and terrifying (the clever script uses the word ‘go’ both in the imperative, let’s-get-out-of-here sense and also in the imperative, orgasmic sense, as a synonym for ‘come’). And is if to demonstrate typical Xer cynicism, it all happens while holly jolly Christmas passes by practically unnoticed in the background.
Boiler Room and Wall Street (review)
And that realistic attitude is a big part of what makes Boiler Room so refreshing: Younger doesn’t offer any pat, happy endings, doesn’t have all his characters wrap things up by kissing and making nice. The film ends on such an abrupt note — and such a perfect one — that I gasped with unexpected delight.
The Talented Mr. Ripley movie review: American psycho
Exquisitely understated, this is an instant classic, not in the sense that the word is typically applied to movies, but how we use the word to describe cars and clothes, embodying clean lines, subtle elegance, and a sense of timelessness.
Mystery Men (review)
I’m happy to report, having now seen the movie that goes with the trailer, that my final disillusionment has been postponed, at least for a little while. Mystery Men is a dream of a summer flick: outrageously funny, unabashedly hip, totally cool, with just a hint of heart beating under a cynicism that’s well beyond skin deep — and I mean that in the best possible way.
Schindler’s List (review)
While Schindler’s List is the least Spielberg-ian and least showy of the director’s work, it demonstrates an artistry that is at times highly stylized. The film is a study in contrasts and ironies.
The Silence of the Lambs (review)
The Silence of the Lambs is a psychological thriller of the highest order, and well deserving of the unusual Oscar nod for Best Picture, never before bestowed upon a film like this. Before or since, action/horror has never been done so well or so cerebrally.
