Jennifer Lopez plays Sharon Pogue, a tough and fast-mouthed police officer, but with some issues from the past. A broken man whom she helped during a big crash of cars earlier runs into her and even though he is (or became) very introvert, he tries to make contact.
I was actually looking for an action movie, but “Angel Eyes” is more of a romantic drama with a few police thriller elements. The acting is good though and the film is an alright watch.
On stressfull days the goofy Doyle Gipson (Samuel L. Jackson) and the young and hip lawyer Gavin Banek (Ben Affleck) bump into each other on the road. Banek doesn’t take to time to handle things properly and in his rush he gives the most important document of his carreer to Gipson. Gipson on his part does want to be a gentleman and tries to follow Banek.
Getting a “no”, Gipson gets annoyed and a strange chain of events in which two men who need each other get carried away by the egos unfold.
Somewhat amusing.
In Sorrentino’s latest we follow Mariano de Santis who has been the president of Italy for a long time and has a half year left in his last term. He has always taken the save route and steered the country through several crisises. For his last year he has a few ‘headache cases’ left.
It is not the first time that Sorrentino has old people looking back at their lives. De Santis never got over the death of his wife with whom he had been together for 40 years. He mourns her every day.
Being a jurist himself, De Santis has his daughter as the main jurist in his administration and she is both his professional and personal mirror. De Santis also has a few close friends with whom he goes back many years and which whom he shares his doubts and reflections. One of these old friends is the Pope, here portrayed as a black man with grey dreadlocks; also something not uncommon for Sorrentino.
It is all there. Deep emotions, modern music that is not entirely out of place, subtle jokes, beautiful women, drama and existential questions. “Grace” is again a good Sorrentino.
Young Matt Damon and Edward Norton play gifted card players who use their skills to pay for studies, rent, etc. Things do not always go well though.
Mike (Damon) looses everything in a high stake game and “Worm” (Norton) comes out of jail with debts. Trying to use their old game to solve their financial problems they make things worse than they were.
A rough drama playing during the prohibition against alcohol in the USA.
The Bondurant family is one of the many moonshiners in the state of Virginia making their booze on the countryside and selling it in the city. This is a cause of violent crime.
Then local ‘law enforcement’ picks up the plan to ‘regulate’ so that they get a part of the profit. The Bondurants do not like to be intimidated and a war ensues.
I saw a Sarah Jessica Parker in the 1993 film “Striking Distance” and thought: was this before “Sex and the City”? Indeed, the series ran only from 1998 to 2004 and the first film is from 2008.
I never really watched the series, but I have seen enough of it to know the characters and the series had a bit of a ‘light entertainment’ ring in my head, so I wondered if the movie would be any fun after all these years.
For starters, the film is a lot longer than I expected: 2:25 hours. It plays after the series (obviously). The four ladies are approaching the age of 50 and I suppose the director took it that the viewers know the series, so the film just continues from there.
What I did not anticipate, is that the film is not really ‘light entertainment’. Sure, there is the sexually tinted humour, the direct conversations between the ladies, the openness about the female body and mind, but there is a lot of heartbreak, missed love, failed relationships, in short: a lot more drama than I thought there would be.
Basically the film is a very long episode in the series.
Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) was active in a left wing protest group, protesting againt immigration politics. Many years later he lives hidden away without his partner, but with his daughter, always paranoid that the past will catch up with him.
During one of the youthful actions, Bob’s former partner messed with a colonel (a great Sean Penn) who held his grudge long enough to interfere with Bob’s life 16 years after the incident.
In a lengthy (2:41 hours) movie, P.T. Anderson gives a peak into American left wing underground and comes with a nice cat-and-mouse game with a lot of drama and some tension.
Looking for something lighter, we got this movie by, with and produced by Eddie Murphy.
Sugar Ray (Richard Pryor) has a succesful club, not quite legal. There is music, gambling and prostitution. The competition is unhappy about the succes and tries to scare it away.
In America of a century ago, there is a big divide between the black and white communities which is made some fun of.
Somewhat amusing.
This film has been on my whishlist for a while, but it being a horror it was not too high. The Golden Globes made it rise enough to watch it.
The film starts wonderfully with 1920’ies American black culture. Some blacks are still working on cotton plantations, while others have made their (criminal) ways in the big cities. Segregation is massive. KKK still rules.
Two brothers who have become rich in Chicago return to the area where they grew up with the idea to start a “juke”; a black music bar. They know the gifted blues musician Sammie who has got the gift to play away the veil that divides the ‘real’ and the ‘spirit’ worlds.
While dancing to (modernised for extra effect) blues and other black music, the “juke” is attacked and the film turns into a horror.
The first part is the most interesting. The horror part is alright.
Ritter moved to one of the Galapagos islands to work on a radical new philosophy. His manuscripts are literally shipped to newspapers who happily publish his adventures (and philosophy?).
These publications inspire other people to also travel to the island, so all the sudden Ritter and his partner are no longer in only inhabitents of the island, they are accompanied by a family. Convinced that the family will give up soon enough, Ritter does little to help them.
Later also a pomp “baroness” shows up with the wild idea to build a luxury hotel on the island. From then on the different parties are going to try to play out each other against one another.
“Eden” is an alright drama about human behavior, but not exactly a high-flyer.