Carlito's Way

Quickly, as I would rather be doing other things than talk about this movie I just saw. Brian De Palma does an incredible job of creating a feel for the streets here. And he also got a lot of help from Pacino, who has mastered this whole street schtick.

This film is very good. It is long and tends to move slow but in doing that, time is taken to examine and magnify situations in Carlito's life. Careful attention is paid to the way he handles his quest for money to go on vacation in the Bahamas. And carefully, the fact that he cannot just quit being "dirty" comes alive. No matter what, he will always be involved.

8/10



Recommend this...and yes, it's way better than any Mission Impossible movie.

Blood Simple

What you see is this basic situation, common scenario played out very well by a very small cast of characters. There are really six characters. Four make up the bulk of the storyline. And you have this girl who wants to get away from this guy and decides to sleep with someone that worked for her boyfriend. That pisses her boyfriend off, as it should. And he knows she's fooling around so she gets a private investigator. This private investigator is a cocky motherfucker who has his own set of rules. That's what throws this movie off. He eventually goes against the wishes of the boyfriend and sends this film off towards its ending scene.

The private investigator played by M. Emmet Walsh is fantastic. Not the Marty character or Ray isn't good. But this role really grabbed my attention. Ray had a way of making a basic scene seem bigger than it really was. And the female lead, Frances McDormand showed why she is such a great actress. She just made me feel like death was on the doorstep waiting to kill.

This is not a complex movie. It doesn't need to be. Very Hitchcock, very simplistic (no wonder simple is in the title) and very low-budget. The independent look to it all gives it a certain edge. I like it.

7/10

A Fish Called Wanda

What I saw was great comedic wit by John Cleese, Michael Palin, and Kevin Kline. Jamie Lee Curtis wasn't too bad either. Actually, to give credit where credit is due, she kept the story moving by her continuous double crossings.

And Michael Palin...God damn I can't go farther than that. It's not worth it to me. This film is great comic mischief and well, it's worth watching anytime you want a laugh. There is no message in this comedy. Everything's all in fun.

7/10

Brazil

Wild, crazy, deranged, and totally out-of-this world material that blows your mind. Brazil is one of those movies that you watch just because you wonder what strange and far-out thing will happen next.

The story is a basic one. And one that I would connect today if this films wasn't so eclectic. Sam Lowry works for the Ministry of Information. The Ministry goes after "suspected terrorists". In the movie, a mistake is made and instead of Tuttle, a Buttle is taken. This man is taken from his family and eventually winds up dying. A woman happens to witness this and adamantly and persistently asks for help in correcting the mistake. To no surprise, the Ministry is not helpful. That story is good enough on its own. But...

...Add the fact that Sam Lowry is psychologically unsound. He has the hots for this woman who has discovered the mistake. He DREAMS about her. And these dreams are far-out out of this world. Also, every woman over 50 apparently gets a form of primitive facelifting to get rid of wrinkles that greatly affects life. That is not central to the storyline. In fact, if anything, that part detracts.

De Niro is Tuttle who is this heat engineer who could easily be a comic book hero had Terry Gilliam pursued the idea. He steals every scene that he is in, which is amazing considering the fact that I think he is in like 5 or 6 out of the entire 142 minutes of the film. Bob Hoskins also caught my eye as a magnificent character in this.

The best part of it all comes at the end. There is a grand finale of sorts that Terry Gilliam puts on that blew my mind. Great.

What I didn't like though were some of the dialogue scenes that seemed to be repetitive and drawn out. I wasn't sure that some of these scenes needed to be as long as they were and I lost focus. The overall plot was complicated by these sometimes too and clouded the main points of the movie. But I guess that kind of thing is what would warrant a revisiting of this masterpiece.

8/10



Solid flick. Great entertainment.

Ordinary Decent Criminal

What led me to watch this movie was the DVD box that said something to the tune of if you liked Ocean's Eleven (presumably referring to the remake) or Italian Job (again, the remake) than you will like this movie. I took that to mean this was another one of those con heist criminal movies and well, I was right. (Or is it the box that is right?)

Anyways, this flick was just average, perhaps slightly better than average. Kevin Spacey turns in a very solid performance as Michael Lynch, who is the ordinary criminal in the movie. The idea is he is such a decent man in life ---so how could he be a criminal? Well, when you get down to it, it's cause he likes to show-off. And that is something Michael Lynch is very good at.

The film is more manufactured than realistic as when they steal the Caravaggio I don't think it would take so long for guards to collapse on them. I also don't think they would be able to defend themselves by simply putting up the 30 million dollar painting in front of them. Don't these guards have snipers or more accurate weapons? All they ever carry are machine guns.

I couldn't pin point what makes this different than Ocean's Eleven or Italian Job. It could be the cast. Although Colin Farrell makes a small appearance, there really aren't anymore big name actors. Well, I can't forget everyone had to be able to speak with an Irish accent in this movie. But it could also be that nobody accepts the ludicrity of what they are doing. In Ocean's Eleven, there is that scene where Carl Reiner's character asks those questions and then takes a pill after finding out how unlikely success is. For some reason, this is supposed to be a decent living for Michael.

And moreover, we find him alive at the end, isolated. A smile is on his face. And what kind of life is that? The family thinks he is dead and he's off smirking around.

I give this a 6/10.





It's entertaining. Kevin Spacey does well as Michael Lynch. But the one problem is it just doesn't harbor what Ocean's Eleven and Italian Job does.