Port of Shadows (Le Quai des Brumes)
May 20, 2004
“Oh, society is what it is, a bit sinister, a bit seamy, but I’ve heard there are beautiful things in it too.” This line is spoken by an artist early on in Port of Shadows (1938) and perfectly describes the world of this movie. Based on Pierre Mac...
Starsky & Hutch
March 11, 2004
Let’s be honest, most cinematic remakes of classic TV shows are awful. They either barely resemble the original (like the Claire Danes version of The Mod Squad) or turn it into kitsch parody (like The Flintstones). More often than not the contemporary...
Cop Land: Director’s Cut
December 11, 2003
Cop Land (1997) is a homage to police corruption films like Sidney Lumet’s Serpico (1973) and Prince of the City (1981). In many respects, Cop Land is also a modern western, complete with a High Noon (1952) style showdown. A big deal was made about...
Road to Perdition
November 27, 2003
Road To Perdition is a curious beast. It’s polished, poetic and, in some scenes, pretty darn exceptional. It won an Oscar for the late Conrad Hall’s drop dead gorgeous cinematography and the critics lapped it up, even if the public were divided....
Mad Dog Time
August 6, 2003
Mad Dog Time (1996) exists in a world where Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack never went out of fashion. It’s a parallel universe stuck in the 1940s and populated by gangsters and femme fatales. To say that this film works on its own kooky internal...
Panic Room
July 7, 2003
Locked in a hi-tech, reinforced steel room cowering from the intruders in her house, Meg Altman must protect her daughter and get the violent intruders out any way she can. Sounds like she’s had a run-in with suspicious Daz, but instead it’s...
Ocean’s Eleven
July 3, 2003
When it comes to crime capers there’s only one man for the job, and it doesn’t even invalidate his parole. Daz examines Ocean’s Eleven and plots a trip to Las Vegas, guess we won’t be seeing him for a few years. Over the years...
From Hell
June 12, 2003
We question the wisdom of giving Daz a film about Jack the Ripper, someone he has followed and idolised for years. We decided what the hell, let’s treat it as an experiment and see what he does. For some reason I’ve always had an interest...
The Godfather Trilogy
May 12, 2003
There are times I feel that I’ve just simply seen too many films. Particularly bad films, the kind of film that just saps your enthusiasm for it all. I’d convinced myself that I liked bad movies, that I actually derived enjoyment from watching...
S.W.A.T.
April 3, 2003
S.W.A.T., Special Weapons and Tactics, or Script Weak, Action Terrible as it could also be known. Quite why Samuel L. Jackson persists in choosing these roles is beyond me, but here he is once again playing a wafer thin character, which seems based only...
