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Tag: drama

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
Entertainment

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot Review

William McPherson

I literally cannot fathom how it took me so long to finally getting around to seeing this. Clint Eastwood has been on my Mt. Rushmore of actors since I was a fetus, and Jeff Bridges is also on that list. This movie sees them in different points of their career, Bridges is a young cocky little hippy named Lightfoot who opens the movie by stealing a car, and Eastwood is an old bank robber in hiding who opens the movie as the pastor of a church, before literally being run out of the congregation by…

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The Untouchables
Entertainment

The Untouchables Review

William McPherson

The Untouchables is a near perfect mix of cinematic ingredients. Even though it was filmed in the late 80s this is not a modern gangster movie like Goodfellas, or even the Godfather. This is basically a “Hayes Code” era film that somehow escaped in a time machine and wound up where it did. That said it is beautiful movie, wonderfully shot by Brian De Palma, with a classic score by Ennio Morricone (and with period music by Duke Ellington); and then you add in the dialogue from David “F*** You”…

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Donnie Brasco
Entertainment

Donnie Brasco Review

William McPherson

Johnny Depp will star as Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger in the upcoming movie “Black Mass” this month. I am quite anxious to see it. So with that in mind I went back and watched Johnny Depp’s other famous gangster movie in which he played real life undercover agent “Donnie Brasco” who infiltrated a crew in one of the five families during the 1970s. This is one of my favorite “gangster” movies, for one because it seems to be a little more self aware (without going over the top) than your…

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Casino
Entertainment

Casino Review

William McPherson

This movie is to Goodfellas kind of what El Dorado was to Rio Bravo or Rio Lobo (Rio Lobo would be more the Departed in this comparison though I guess). An indirect remake with many of the same actors in a different setting. When the premise is as good as Goodfellas, who’s gonna complain? Joe Pesci gets to play perhaps his most memorable and most stereotypical Joe Pesci character ever, crushing skulls in vice grips and stabbing folks who smartoff in the neck with their own ink pens and whatnot…

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Road to Perdition
Entertainment

Road to Perdition Review

William McPherson

On the list of adjectives one might use to describe Tom Hanks, “badass” is probably way down on the list. However, Hanks manages to portray one quite convincingly here in mob enforcer Tom Sullivan. This was Sam Mendes’ first movie after his critical darling American Beauty. It is a visually captivating film, both in the set stylings as well as the way Mendes captures movement. I totally forgot that Daniel Craig was in this film as the bad guy who sets the events of this movie together. Mendes…

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Entertainment

Foxcatcher Review

William McPherson

Foxcatcher is a meticulously crafted, well researched, and fantastically acted film. That said, I found it to be kind of a dull and ponderous movie, although this is the kind of thing you don’t watch for entertainment as much as for the experience. Steve Carrel plays John DuPont, a spoiled billionaire by birth opens up the wrestling program that gives this movie its’ name. When Dupont invites noted Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) to move up to his sprawling private kingdom and…

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Ex Machina
Entertainment

Ex Machina Review

William McPherson

The Arrow on JoBlo.com had perhaps the best quote on Ex Machina I could find anywhere when he wrote about this movie “Ex Machina was Frankenstein meets The Island of Dr. Moreau by way of Basic Instinct.” which just about sums this flick up for me. Quirky introspective Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson) is a twenty something intellectual who works as a coder for a big corporation that runs this universe’s version of Google, ran by a guy (Oscar Isaac) who is basically the serious dramatic version of Lou…

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Boogie Nights
Entertainment

Boogie Nights Review

William McPherson

This movie is like the Goodfellas of porn. I saw Boogie Nights at an age I most certainly should not have seen anything of the type, but it has stuck with me years later for reasons that have jack shit to do with nudity or porn. For me this movie isn’t so much about the porn industry as it is about the era of excess that was the late 70s and early 80s, AKA the Disco Era. It’s also a fascinating look into what it is like to become a celebrity a niche industry and how it can all go up in smoke…

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Gone Girl
Entertainment

Gone Girl Review

William McPherson

This is the kind of mystery movie I didn’t think they made anymore, but I’m damn glad to see they still do. Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike play Nick and Amy, a couple that fell in love young and wound up moving to rural Missouri and turn into your average miserable couple with a bored wife and a dunce husband. The movie begins on their anniversary and we see Nick and another young lady trash talking his nagging bride, at the bar that her parents bought him. When Nick drops by home to bring her…

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Desperado
Entertainment

Desperado Review

William McPherson

Desperado is the sequel to the independent critical darling “El Mariachi” and a prequel to the epic “Once Upon a Time in Mexico”. Of the three movies this one is by far my favorite, even though I know Mariachi is the one I am probably supposed to like the most. I do respect it immensely for what it achieved with such a small budget mind you, but visually speaking I find this film much more compelling. I like it more than the final installment of the trilogy because I found that movie to be a…

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Reindeer Games
Entertainment

Reindeer Games Review

William McPherson

This is one of my favorite horrible movies. It has every bad movie cliché in the book, a ton of gnarly character actors, questionable acting, awful writing, pointless plot twists galore etc, and is centered around a bunch of guys dressed like Santa trying to rob a casino. What’s not to like? To attempt to explain the plot in full with all the spoilers would be quite the pain in the arse, but here’s the short version. Ben Affleck’s character is a car thief named Rudy (yes, Rudy, in a movie called…

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The Petrified Forest
Entertainment

The Petrified Forest Review

William McPherson

Seeing a younger Bogart in the prime of his forceful personality and screen presence is really something to behold. People forget the guy was already in his 40s when he got his first big break in the early 40s. This movie captures him in his physical prime in his mid 30s playing a desperate gangster trapped in a roadside diner awaiting his final reckoning with the authorities. Also at the diner is a young waitress, Bette Davis, a teenage girl stuck in a boring hole in the wall place with only…

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Rain Man
Entertainment

Rain Man Review

William McPherson

I grew up an only child for all intents and purposes, but I have a brother with mental disabilities who is quite a bit older than me, so in a weird and very fitting way, this movie hits very close to home. Now, my own brother doesn’t have the gifts for memory that Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man character here displays, and my dad isn’t some super rich guy leaving behind a sweet ride and a big secret so that’s about where the similarities end. Hoffman’s character is a sad but honorable creature…

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Entertainment

Seven Review

William McPherson

Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt play detectives in a city that never stops raining in this modern neo-noir classic. Pitt is young and aggressive here, and wants to barrel through the boring minutia of every day police work. Morgan Freeman however, is the picture of patience, pouring over evidence night after night, sometimes falling asleep at the local library. They are on the hunt after a  seriously deranged serial killer who appears to be using the “Seven Deadly Sins” as his inspiration, as each…

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Blow
Entertainment

Blow Review

William McPherson

Years ago when I was a teenager at a high school football game, some random girl told me I “looked like that guy from Blow”.... Now aside from sporting the same hair style at the time, it was the most untrue, but also most flattering compliment I have ever received about my own personal appearance. I just rewatched this movie the other night, and the thought occurred to me while this movie is perfectly in my wheelhouse in terms of style, plot, and soundtrack, is this as good as some say it is? I…

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The Gunman
Entertainment

The Gunman Review

William McPherson

This is strictly a matter of personal taste, but I prefer my shoot em’ up style action flicks to be light on the preachy politics and heavy on the ass kicking suspense. Now, I realize any movie starring Sean Penn is going to be heavy on the former. I found I could mostly ignore that though. Penn here plays a government assassin who has been put out to pasture after a big job down in the Congo. In the years since that job he has had to cut off all contact with his fiancée, who is now married…

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Uncle Buck
Entertainment

Uncle Buck Review

William McPherson

This is an overlooked movie in John Hughes series of Chicago based comedies, but one that is near and dear to yours truly’s cantankerous old ticker. Macaulay Culkin had a remarkable childhood film career, and by all accounts, a disastrous childhood. Aside from his two very successful featured roles in the Home Alone movies, I believe this movie to be his best work. Much of that can be credited to the late John Candy with whom Culkin displayed tremendous chemistry here. This is one of my favorite…

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50 Shades of Grey
Entertainment

50 Shades of Grey Review

William McPherson

The young impressionable English lit major (note: only female authors who type with one hand down their pants normally have the audacity to make their heroine an English lit major) Anastasia Steele begins a tortured romance with reclusive millionaire Christian Grey in a movie bad enough to make me reconsider my stance on eugenics. In order to hold on to my man card I must first admit my seeing this movie was strictly the result of my wife renting it and my being an awesome husband and agreeing…

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Revenge 1990
Entertainment

Revenge Review

William McPherson

I was up late the other night and caught this movie on TV and was surprised I had not heard of it before. Then while watching it, it occurred to me just how easy a movie this would have been to forget. 1990 was a very important year in Kevin Costner’s career for reasons that have nothing to do with this film. This was the year, as you will recall, that he released Dances with Wolves. This movie is certainly not on that level. For starters, it looks like they took the working or filming title of…

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Crazy Heart
Entertainment

Crazy Heart Review

William McPherson

Crazy Heart features one of the best Jeff Bridges performances I’ve ever seen. That is definitely saying something as he has made a career of low key but brilliant performances. I admit my bias here. He is my favorite actor, as far as dramatic movies go. The story here is also something that is very much in my wheelhouse again, as it is a music movie, telling the story of past his prime country star Bad Blake. Blake used to pack in the big arenas, but is now relegated to playing his old…

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