Review – Boogie Nights

This saga of a small corner of the porn industry in the late 70s and early 80s turned out to be more grim than the ads made it appear. Still, as a whole this was a really good movie, with impressive acting (surprisingly impressive from a couple of cast members, specifically Burt Reynolds and “Marky” Mark Wahlberg). The high points, however, were probably the music and the art direction, which combine to travel beyond mere kitsch to really re-create the time. Worth seeing

Review – JFK

Oliver Stone must have done something right with this one, since apparently it bugs the crap out of conservative media critics (though why they’d care about Lyndon Johnson’s tarnished reputation is beyond me). On the other hand, exactly what it is that Stone does right is a bit more elusive. The preachiness would be annoying if it wasn’t so obviously ridiculous, sort of like Pat Robertson taking credit for using the power of prayer to change the course of a hurricane. Overall the film is a pleasant experience provided one is in the mind-set to just let the imagery and paranoia flow by without trying to glean logic or meaning from it. The DVD version features some of the most entertaining director’s commentary I’ve ever seen. Stone mixes a handful of interesting technical tidbits (including a fair amount of candor about which scenes feature “artistic license”) with some absolutely captivating paranoid rants that go well beyond even the high levels achieved by the movie itself. David Ferrie as a latter-day Davy Crockett? Yeah, inasmuch as they both went around with mangy animal fur on their heads. Mildly amusing

Review – Jackie Brown

Wow, I haven’t seen this many long tracking shots since film school. Jean-Luc Goddard would be proud of the lethargic pace of this failed atmosphere piece, enfant terrible Quentin Tarantino’s attempt to make an old Elmore Leonard novel into a 30-minute caper movie stretched out over two and a half hours. What a waste of good acting talent, too. The normally excellent Samuel L. Jackson is the delivery vehicle for most of the film’s 30-some appearances of the N-word, and by the time he lets his hair down toward the end he starts to look like the Crypt Keeper. See if desperate

Review – Tomorrow Never Dies

James Bond versus the evil news media, here represented by Jonathan Pryce as a sort of combination Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, and just a little Bill Gates stirred in to make him extra hateful. I suppose I would have completely ignored this one if I hadn’t gotten hooked on Bond movies when I was a kid. I’ve been watching these things since I was so young that I couldn’t understand why a guy as cool as Bond would spend so much time playing with girls (who, after all, were commonly known to be a major source of cooties) when he could be out killing bad guys. But in all fairness, this one is a bit better than the last Pierce Brosnan Bond effort; the actor seems a little more comfortable with the role, though he’s still a far cry from Sean Connery. Speaking of whom, did anyone else notice that the Brosnan Bond in this one is mystified by a Chinese computer keyboard, while if memory serves the Connery Bond (in You Only Live Twice) is supposed to have possessed a degree in “Oriental languages”? Nobody else noticed that, huh? Go figure. Mildly amusing

Review – Ronin

Akira Kurosawa and Frank Miller fans alike are likely to be disappointed by this mediocre pot-boiler of fakey international intrigue. And who would have thought that after all these years John Frankenheimer’s secret ambition was to be William Friedken? If you don’t like your car chases and shoot-em-ups marred by interfering details like plot, character, script and the like, check it out. Mildly amusing

Review – The Rock

Here’s another five minute movie stretched out over two hours by a lot of macho posturing and expensive action scenes. The plot’s nothing special: a chemical weapons expert (Nicolas Cage) teams up with a former-British-commando-and-ex-inmate-at-Alcatraz (Sean Connery) to go after rogue Marines who have taken over the Rock and are threatening to launch chemical munitions into San Francisco. I guess the intrigue is clever enough and the acting’s not too bad, but the big budget effects are what really keeps this going for as long as it goes. Mildly amusing

Review – The Replacement Killers

About the most John Woo you can get without hiring John Woo. Despite the fortune cookie-cutter plot, the film keeps moving pretty well. The action scenes are good, and the acting isn’t too bad either (an unusual bonus for the genre). Worth seeing