Wild at Heart (1990) - A beautifully shot, entertaining and strangely coherent mess of a movie. The cast is great sans Laura Dern, who is way too aristocratic looking to play a white trash sweetheart - she also couldn't even bother to convincingly smoke a cigarette. Jennifer Jason Leigh would have been perfect here, but that can be said for so many movies. While it doesn't work in the way that a Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive works, and doesn't really improve on an additional view, Wild at Heart is a nice little movie with some great visuals (scope) and dialogue that probably influenced Tarantino to some degree. B
2 Days In The Valley (1996) Written and Directed by John Herzfeld. Cinematography by Oliver Wood and Music by Anthony Marinelli. Film Editing was by Jim Miller and Wayne Wahrman. The film stars Danny Aiello (Once Upon A Time In America, Do the Right Thing, L?on: The Professional ) as Dosmo Pizzo, Greg Cruttwell as Allan Hopper, Jeff Daniels (The Lookout) as Alvin Strayer, Teri Hatcher as Becky Foxx, Glenne Headly (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Dick Tracy) as Susan Parish, Peter Horton as Roy Foxx, Marsha Mason as Audrey Hopper, Paul Mazursky (Blackboard Jungle) as Teddy Peppers, James Spader (Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Storyville) as Lee Woods, Eric Stoltz as Wes Taylor, Charlize Theron as Helga Svelgen, Keith Carradine (McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Emperor of the North, Pretty Baby) as Detective Creighton, Louise Fletcher (One Flew Over The ) Cuckoo's Nest, Mulholland Falls ) as Evelyn and Classic Noir vet Lawrence Tierney as Older Man. Somehow I missed it first go round - entertaining 8/10
Anything else you can tell us? Does it have a story?
I'm firmly on the right side of the coming-of-age debate. I tortured myself and watched a scene from Lady Bird. Yuck. Here was my mini review from a few months back. I don't know if you'll like it.2 Days in the Valley (1996) - This had to be sold/greenlit as Pulp Fiction meets Short Cuts and while this badly misses its intended target, it's still an interesting and entertaining miss with a mostly solid ensemble cast. The plot is goofy and illogical at many points but I would recommend this to anyone that enjoys the Altman Nashville type of movie - just keep the expectations low. C+
I'm firmly on the right side of the coming-of-age debate. I tortured myself and watched a scene from Lady Bird. Yuck.
I tortured myself and watched a scene from Lady Bird. Yuck.
Symphonie pour un massacre (1963) 8/10. Partners in a casino are also drug runners, and one of the group (Jean Rochefort) sees an opportunity to rob his friends and remain undetected. Things go according to plan . . . until they don't. Then exciting improvisations begin, but chance remains the great spoiler. This neatly plotted crime film would surely delight Tarantino. Charles Vanel has a role, and there is even a brief appearance by Jose Giovanni (who also helped write the screenplay's dialog).
Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979) - 9/10. Saw this almost exactly 40 years ago at the 1979 Chicago International Film Festival. I couldn't remember much about it and decided to try it again now that a restored version is touring. It was showing at Film Forum and I took the wife. She loved it. I also was impressed. Gian Maria Volonte plays Carlo Levi, an intellectual placed in internal exile by Mussolini during the war with Ethiopia (ca. 1935). This was made for Italian TV and it's a quality production in 4 parts. Part one is mostly Levi's journey to his place of exile, Lucania, the end of the world. In part 2 Levi's sister (Lea Masari) visits him, and he secures the services of a housekeeper (Irene Pappas). In part 3 he reluctantly begins providing the peasants with medical treatment (he trained as a doctor but heretofore never practiced). In part 4 he gets the better of his masters just before the war ends and his amnesty comes through. Based on, I gather, real events. It's an impressive bit of filmmaking at 220 minutes. I guess some feel this is Rossi's masterpiece and it certainly must be Volonte's.
Rango is still the only good film under Gore Verbinski's belt.
Gas-Oil aka Hi-Jack Highway (1955) Director: Gilles Grangier, with stars Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Gaby Basse, Simone Berthier, Charles Bouillaud, and Marcel Bozzuffi. A nice French Noir story that can easily fit in with They Drive by Night (1940), Thieves' Highway (1949) Hell Drivers (1957) and The Long Haul (1957). It's about truck drivers on the haul between Paris and Auvergne in Central France. A group of gangsters rob a messenger service of a 50 million francs. They use two cars for the job one to block the messenger the other to block it from backing up. They gun down the guards and three men take off in one car in one direction while the driver of other car in the rear grabs the briefcase with the loot. He switches cars. The first three gangsters wait at a rendezvous but the man with the loot never shows up. He does show up on a dark rainy night when we see his body pushed from a car.Jean Chape (Gabin) a trucker, after sleeping over at his gal pal Anne's house (Moreau) , gets in his truck and while driving his route, runs over the body of the already dead gangster. He calls the police who immediately impound his truck. Soon the widow of the dead man and his gangster buddies begin to harass Jean believing he has the stolen money. Jean rallies his teamster buddies to deal with them. 7/10