The Ice Harvest
December 12, 2005
The Ice Harvest (2005) is a pitch black comedy set in Wichita, Kansas on Christmas Eve. Charlie (Cusack) is a mob lawyer who has stolen $2 million of his boss’ (Quaid) money with the help of Vic (Thornton), a local pornographer. Charlie has a thing...
C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation: Season 4
December 6, 2005
There’s a scene in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle where the girls arrive at a murder scene and promptly discover the whereabouts of the killer by the taste of his sex-wax residue. It’s a direct nod (or homage if you want to get French)...
Prime Cut
December 5, 2005
Prime Cut (1972) is a neglected crime thriller directed by Michael Ritchie, known more for helming the Fletch movies than making a gritty action movie with Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman. Nick (Marvin) is an enforcer hired for $50,000 to collect $500,000...
The Godfather Part II
November 18, 2005
Fresh from the phenomenal success of the first Godfather film (1972), Francis Ford Coppola quickly followed it with Part II (1974), a sequel that many consider superior to its predecessor. However, over the years the two parts meld together so seamlessly...
Sin City
November 12, 2005
Sin City began as series of graphic novels created by Frank Miller. They are loving homages to the gritty pulp novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane and classic film noirs from the ‘40s and ‘50s. Miller’s world—the dangerous,...
Law & Order: Season 3
November 10, 2005
In some respects there’d be no Law and Order without the films of Sidney Lumet—specifically the ones about police corruption and the compromises that cops and lawyers are sometimes forced to make. These themes are the foundation for Dick Wolf’s...
The Godfather Part III
November 9, 2005
Why? This is the question that many people asked themselves before and after seeing Francis Ford Coppola’s third (and hopefully last) installment of The Godfather saga. The first two parts were such perfect meditations on violence and the absolute corrupting...
Be Cool
November 7, 2005
After the success of Get Shorty (1995) as a novel and a film, Elmore Leonard wrote a sequel entitled Be Cool with the notion of it being turned into a film as well (his books read almost like screenplays anyway). It has and with the hope of lightning...
Danger: Diabolik
November 6, 2005
Mario Bava was known predominantly for making classic horror films like Black Sabbath (1963) but he also essayed several other genres in his long, illustrious career: sword and sandal epics, science fiction and, with Danger: Diabolik (1968), a comic book...
The Driver
November 2, 2005
In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s Walter Hill was one of the best action/thriller directors. Like Don Siegel and Sam Peckinpah before him, Hill made lean, gritty no-nonsense genre pictures like The Warriors (1979), Southern Comfort (1981) and 48HRS...
