Spivs
October 27, 2005
Cockney grifter Ken Stott gets more than he bargains for when a routine truck hijack leaves him with two refugee children to take care of. Seven years. That’s how long ago Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels appeared and gave the British film industry...
Suspect Zero
October 6, 2005
Suspect Zero (2004) is yet another tired entry in the exhausted serial killer genre. This time out, Ben Kingsley gets his turn to play a creepy sociopath (although, he’s more John Doe from Seven than Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs)—at least...
Criminal
October 6, 2005
Based on the movie, Nine Queens (2000), Criminal (2004) is the directorial debut of Gregory Jacobs, a protégé of filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (who also co-produced the movie). Stylistically speaking, the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. The...
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
September 18, 2005
Sam Peckinpah spent his career fighting against the Hollywood studio system to make his own distinctive brand of films. Out of all the movies he made only on one was he given final cut privileges—Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), the epitome...
Thieves’ Highway
August 26, 2005
Based on A.I. Bezzerides’ novel, Thieves’ Market, Jules Dassin’s Thieves’ Highway (1949) offers a glimpse into the world of truck drivers risking their lives on the open road, having to deal with their vehicles breaking down and pushing themselves...
Taxi
August 24, 2005
Inept cop Jimmy Fallon must team up with girl-racer Queen Latifah to catch a gang of wily bank robbers who also happen to be supermodels. A remake of French hit Taxi from 1998, Luc Besson again returns to produce this lightweight tale of cops n’...
Heat: Special Edition
August 21, 2005
After the commercial and critical success of The Last of the Mohicans (1992), filmmaker Michael Mann made his most ambitious film up to that point in his career with Heat (1996). He cast legendary actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as the leads in what...
Get Shorty: Collector’s Edition
August 12, 2005
After Pulp Fiction (1994), John Travolta could do anything he wanted. Quentin Tarantino told him to do Get Shorty (1995) even after the actor passed on it several times. QT was a big fan of Elmore Leonard’s novels and knew that the actor’s talents...
Touchez pas au Grisbi
August 9, 2005
Based on Albert Simonin’s famous French crime novel of the same name, Touchez pas au Grisbi (1954) concerns the friendship between two aging gangsters, Max (Gabin) and Riton (Dary). They have been friends for a long time as is evident from the familiar...
Night and the City
August 8, 2005
After being blacklisted in Hollywood during the McCarthy-era witch hunts, director Jules Dassin moved to London and made the classic film noir, Night and the City (1950) for 20th Century Fox. He presents a shadowy underworld where life is cheap and money...
