Month: June 2022

Low level publishing colleagues Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale spend their evenings meeting yuppies and discoing at New York City nightclubs. Not one of the characters in this film is likeable and very little actually feels of the disco era other than an excellent soundtrack. It is reminiscent of Whit Stillman’s other film Metropolitan with its talkiness and upper class manners. Not much happens, but there’s quite a bit of reflection on relationships of both the romantic and friend/enemy varieties.

I had not intended to watch another David Lynch film so soon after Mulholland Drive, but sometimes what happens when you rely on the whims of the library hold system. Saxophonist Bill Pullman and his wife Patricia Arquette begin receiving VHS tapes showing surveillance of their house. While on death row for the brutal murder of his wife, Pullman somehow transforms into Balthazar Getty and is released from jail. With its Los Angeles location, changing personalities, and gangster characters, it feels somewhat like a mix of Lynch’s Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive and I admittedly understood it even less than that latter film. I have dug its soundtrack for many years.

On the same night attorney Gene Hackman is scheduled to give a speech, San Juan police captain Morgan Freeman brings him in for questioning with regards to the rape and murder of a young girl. Inconsistencies in his story make him a prime suspect, a situation that is not helped by his much younger wife Monica Bellucci’s willingness to cooperate with the cops. While it’s by far not the best work either of the actors has done, especially with the torridness of the story, it’s still a chance to see the great actors play off of each other. Regardless the strength of the film lies in its twists which do not lay out the solution to the mystery until the end.    

Following his attempts to bring to stage Fives Kings, his combined version of five Shakespearean plays, Orson Welles took his obsession to play the character of Falstaff to this production in which he wrote, directed, and starred. Falstaff spends his days carousing with the young Prince Hal, much to the chagrin of the Prince’s father King Henry IV. It comes across as a medieval buddy comedy with a youth and his wayward mentor that culminates in a grand battle scene and an unfortunate ending. My lack of a Shakespearean education had me following the wikipedia synopsis while watching, but I still rather enjoyed both Welles’s portrayal and the cohesive way he combined the group of plays.

After the best cops in New York City Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson die in a stupid accident, mismatched partners Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell stumble into their case, putting together clues that have alluded better policemen. The underlying mystery is obvious and filled with ridiculous coincidences. The humor, typical of McKay-Ferrell pairings, is mostly stupid and generally borderline offensive. It’s not without entertainment value, but I would have rather watched more of the Jackson-Johnson pairing.     

With the crash of ADC Airlines Flight 053 in October 2006, Nigeria had experienced three major airline accidents within the span of a year. This film puts some context to those crashes through the fictional crash of a flight from Lagos to Abuja. Beginning with the crash, it quickly flashes back to the circumstances that brought each of the passengers onto the plane. Like the American disaster films of the 1970s, it’s a bit low budget looking, but has a large, appealing cast, each with a compelling story. Once getting a hand of who is who and how they relate to each other, it’s a pretty entertaining ride.