The Connection isn’t perfect, and I admit part of my feelings leaning in that direction probably have to do with my love for The French Connection, but that doesn’t make it any less a solid, entertaining procedural that slowly builds to an emotionally shattering climax. Drafthouse Films’ Blu-ray release for the French procedural is magnificent, and I can’t help but think this is one motion picture that’s going to hold up remarkably well as the years go by.
Shocker isn’t one of writer/director Wes Craven’s best. It is, however, one of his most eccentric, unhinged and just plain weird.
Nothing is as it seems in The People Under the Stairs, Craven dexterously moving from comedy, to social commentary, to drama, to horror, to satire, to action, to thriller with confident skill. While not every aspect of the film works as well as other, and while the unhinged nature of the narrative can be jarring (especially on initial viewing), so much of the picture sticks with you long after its come to an end one almost can’t help but fall in love with the darn thing in every way whatsoever.
Téchiné, as always, has crafted a visually sumptuous motion picture, but many of these eye-popping tricks do not serve a purpose, the way he plays with time and how he allows editor Hervé de Luze (The Pianist) to eccentrically tie scenes together equally so. In the Name of My Mother certainly has much to recommend, but on the whole the film just doesn’t cut it, ending up as one of the year’s more curious disappoints I’m more frustrated by then I am anything else.
While not without its missteps, and certainly not going to satisfy the masses, for those knowing what it is they are about to see The Green Inferno is about as terrifying an experience as any that can be imagined. I’m not positive I liked it, but that doesn’t make me any less glad I took the time to give the horror effort a look, Roth’s directorial return a startlingly, efficiently brutal reminder of just how strong a genre impresario he can be when he’s of a mind to be one.
There’s just no reason to care, nothing that matters, and when that’s added to the unforgivable disservice done to the newest character, Dennis, the overall effect isn’t just disappointing, it’s downright horrifying.
The Intern (2015) has great potential, De Niro and Hathaway making a terrific team deserving of a better script. But Meyers lets them all down, and that includes herself, unleashing a cavalcade of old ideas so prehistoric they went out of date around the same time women won the right to vote, making the film a bad candidate unworthy of a permanent position.
Sicario lives up to its title, this Mexican slang for a hitman aiming its gunsights at the viewer, leaving those of us who watch broken and battered into a reinforced shell of regret and understanding we might not be able to emerge from anytime soon.
As an attempt to move into more personal territory, as a vehicle for him to stretch, to leave the spectacle behind, I give him props. But as a movie worth watching? As a story I want people to see? Stonewall is a disaster, start to finish, and the only riots that should be associated with it are those of angry ticketholders who wasted good, hard-earned money to view it.