Category: 1990s

Third string quarterback Jamie Foxx performs impressively in his debut, giving new life to the team helmed by veteran coach Al Pacino, which could help stave off the sale of the franchise by owner Cameron Diaz. The film is a bit all over the place in its narrative and underlying message, but the on the field scenes are energetic and tight even with the eye-blisteringly ugly opponent uniforms in the final match. Likewise, the actors playing football players (Foxx, L.L. Cool J, even an aging Dennis Quaid) are solid, but Pacino and Diaz are ridiculously miscast for their roles. They defy believability in almost everything they say.  

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.

When their colleague Greta Scacchi is found raped and murdered, district attorney Brian Dennehy assigns prosecutor Harrison Ford to the case. Despite his attempts to hide his earlier affair with Scacchi, Ford quickly finds himself the chief suspect in the crime. A pretty decent legal drama, the acting is fairly solid and the tension remains high. There’s a handful of possible suspects to the murder with none of them feeling like blatant red herrings and the mystery isn’t resolved until the very last moments of the film.   

When widowed Jane Fonda discovers that her friend and co-worker Robert DeNiro is illiterate, she offers to help him with his disability. The two leads have just enough chemistry and talent that the central romance carries off decently. Unfortunately there is such simplicity in the story-telling to render it distracting. DeNiro is obviously functionally illiterate as he cares for his elderly father and somehow got his current job, but in the film, there is no indication that he has figured out how to get around basic reading-adjacent skills such as navigating a city or choosing from a set of pill bottles. Secondarily, when Fonda’s teenage daughter Martha Plimpton gets pregnant, there is no discussion about her options instead Fonda immediately berates her and jumps to the ‘I’m not going to take care of it’ trope.

In 1950s Los Angeles, Nick Nolte and his crew of ruthless LAPD detectives are called in to investigate the suspicious death of prostitute Jennifer Connolly. Adding complications to the investigation are the prostitute’s previous involvements with Nolte and officials working at the Nevada Test Site. A fairly decent modern noir, it has an absolutely stacked cast with the likes of John Malkovich, Louise Fletcher, and Bruce Dern. I watched this because its title always made me do a double take with its similarity to Mulholland Drive, but in the end, I enjoyed what was offered here and would have liked to see more cases involving the amoral detectives.    

Enhanced with a prototype that gives him extra-human strength and agility, Mark Dacascos escapes to the United States in an attempt to sell the device. Unfortunately his Chinese overlords are hot on his tail requiring to hook up with a down on his luck Kadeem Hardison in an attempt to evade the baddies. The story is silly and there’s some really wacky performances by Brittany Murphy and bad guy John Pyper-Ferguson, but the stunt work and fight choreography are top notch, making it an entertaining, mindless weekend flick.