On a police force full of corruption, Clifton Collins Jr. is a former gang member turned cop who, on the day he is supposed to give testimony on a shooting involving his partner Cuba Gooding Jr., has the worst day of his career. It’s not a great film, told so quickly that it’s impossible to really take in the action or the details of the plot as it unwinds, but the leads give fairly solid performances and make it somewhat worthwhile for anyone interested in their work. 
Even at young ages, Keanu Reeves and Drew Barrymore had some quality performances, so it seems like this made for television movie couldn’t really be that bad. Unfortunately it is so bad, I had mostly suppressed my memories of watching it many years ago. In what comes across as a long advertisement for the city of Cincinnati, Drew falls out of a car during a Christmas Eve snowstorm and smacks her head on a tree. When she comes to, she has landed in Toyland, a town inhabited by people who curiously look like all the people back home a la The Wizard of Oz. The whole production looks like it was filmed on an off day at a storybook themed amusement park and the actors were just told to quickly phone it in. While the rest of the film makes no mention of the holiday, Christmas is bookmarked into the story by having toymaker Pat Morita morph into Santa Claus. 
In the distant future, Sean Connery is an enforcer whose job it is to make sure other Brutals are toiling to provide food for the privileged Eternals. Hitching a ride on the giant Zardoz head that moves between the two communities, he unwittingly awakens a revolution when he is discovered in the lands of the Eternals. Connery’s enforcer costume is iconic and really sets the mood for this weird piece of 1970s science fiction. The Eternals inherited some strange ideas with regards to masculinity and sex. Seeing Sean in his thigh high boots, long braided hair, and red loincloth seems to throw it all for a loop most of them weren’t prepared for. 
Released the same year as Rear Window, this simpler and similar version of the story has Barbara Stanwyck as a woman who witnesses George Sanders murder another woman across the street from her window. Everyone, especially the cops, paints her as a stupid, delusional woman and things are made worse when the killer begins to torment her. Despite a bit of real hokeyness at the end, Stanwyck and Sanders are fantastic, especially in their scenes together. 
I’ve been occasionally surprised into liking some of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, but this is not one of them. A middling Anderson work, it’s a convoluted hippie detective noir told from the perspective of Joaquin Phoenix’s perpetually stoned out detective. Initially asked by his ex-girlfriend to intercede in the abduction of her current lover, he is further embroiled in a conspiracy of sorts when he is hired out on two other cases. It seems to all comes clean in the end, at least for Phoenix and the cases he was hired to solve, but it’s not entirely clear as his perspective is definitely unreliable and I’m not even sure some of the characters weren’t figments of his imagination.
Oscar Nominations: Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay; Best Achievement in Costume Design
Born of a convict during the 17th century, Robin Wright’s titular character is a woman who spends the greater part of her life struggling against her society’s views of poor females. She herself gives birth to a daughter whom she is separated from at a young age. It is this young girl with whom the tale begins; Moll’s companion and friend Morgan Freeman regaling to her her mother’s history. Though short, the interactions between the girl and Freeman are the best parts of the film. While the film is pretty and Wright is charismatic, there isn’t a lot of life to the story as it seemingly moves from episode to episode in Moll’s life, though seemingly not the in the way of Daniel Defoe’s work of the same name.
In this overly long war film, lieutenant colonel Mel Gibson is chosen to lead and train a battalion to fight during the early days of the war in Vietnam. Back home, his wife Madeline Stowe provides support to the other wives left behind. It’s a pretty typical war film with lots of fighting and lots of people dying. There’s just enough backstory about each character that the viewer is supposed to care when they’re blown away. I found the female characters to be somewhat more interesting, but their stories also soon just became notifying the women about their dead loved ones. Though only a little actual characterization is given, there are small attempts to show the Vietnamese command and their soldiers’ experiences on the other side of the war. 
In Reagan-era Los Angeles, Rowdy Roddy Piper has drifted into the city looking for work. There he is awakened to a conspiracy where aliens are living among humans, manipulating them, and stealing Earth’s resources. Those who wear the special sunglasses can see the truth, which beings are actually aliens and the subliminal messages they are using to control the populace. The plot is reminiscent of The Matrix to the point where I’m surprised the ridiculous red-pillers hadn’t latched onto this film instead when they are espousing the ‘truth’. It’s quite a wonderful piece of work. The visuals between the real and false world are fun. I’m surprised Roddy Piper wasn’t more of a leading man. He’s appealing and he leads the film quite well. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a movie where the two protagonists (Piper and an equally great Keith David) brawl with each other for more than five whole minutes.
I do wonder how well someone who has never seen an episode of The Sopranos would follow this movie. As a fan of the television series, this prequel offered quite a bit for me. The film offers the rise and fall of Dickie Moltisanti, setting him up for better and much worse as the mentor of Tony Soprano. Set during the 1967 Newark riots, there’s quite a bit of retconning done to pull in as many references as possible to the original series. This is also done with a number of the characters from the series, shoehorning caricatures of well-known characters into roles that could have better been filled by different personalities. The narration of a ghostly Christopher Moltisanti is rather unnecessary and overly explains things that are already being shown. There were many bright spots, mostly in roles where the actors didn’t try to overly copy their predecessors (Vera Farmiga as Livia, William Ludwig and Michael Gandolfini as young Tonys, Corey Stoll as Junior) but I think it all could have been best served as a limited series.
This is one of the ugliest animated films I’ve ever seen, almost uglier than Antz. While I’d love computer animated films to have some variety in their aesthetic, this ain’t it. Somehow an adaptation of the Persian poem, The Conference of Birds, birds live under the canopy of a giant tree and have forgotten how to fly. They are ruled under a reign of terror and coercion by the condors. A group of random bird, including a mixed breed couple, escape to later follow a path to enlightenment. I can only think the incredible voice cast (Jeremy Irons, Alicia Vikander, Jim Broadbrent) had no idea what the film would look like or the details of the weird plot before signing on to participate.