Its been awhile since I've been able to some movie reviews, so let me throw you some thoughts about a few I've watched recently:
1) From Dusk Till Dawn---what a great twisted movie. Here's a movie that starts off as a brutal robbery film as a George Clooney you've never seen before robs and brutally kills several patrons at a roadside store with the help of his (just slightly) quirky brother Quentin Tarantino. The two of them are essentially, in the famous words of Taco Bell, making a run for the border. They stop at a dive hotel, where circumstances and fate have them colliding with fallen preacher (!!) Harvey Keitel and his two kids. Now, just as this film draws you into the story of how the family is going to escape from these two sociopaths as they cross into Mexico.......well, let's just say that at a certain point in the film the mood changes 180 degrees. That's the point in the movie when the two criminals and the family realize that they've stumbled into a den of vampires. That's right---vampires. And the film then becomes an over-the-top film about a group of people fighting the undead. Its like getting two films for the price of one! The movie gets 3 stars (***), plus an extra 1/2 star for the speech Cheech Marin does in front of the club they stumble upon.....and then another 1/2 star for the unbelieveable (and I do mean UNBELIEVEABLE) dance performance by Satanico Pandemonium. Salma Hayek. What a woman. ****
2) The Cooler---here's a movie that sneaks up and bites you right in the ass. The fantastic William H. Macy, truly one of our finest actors, is Bernie. His job, quite literally, is to walk up to customers at the casino he works at and "cool down" their luck. Bernie is such a loser in life that he the ability to change the luck of people just by coming into contact with them. He walks around with a perpetual black cloud following him around. He lives in a room in a seedy motel in "old Vegas", where people come to gamble....not walk around and go shopping. His room is right next to a prostitute, so every night Bernie gets to hear her & her customers loudly go about their business. He's right next to the pool, which is half filled with water that's sort of a dark green color. Clearly Bernie is having a run of bad luck. He works in a casino in old Las Vegas that's run by his old friend Shelly, played by Alec Baldwin, who quite honestly hasn't been this good in so long that its like discovering a new actor. Into Bernie's life stumbles Natalie (Monica Bello), who is losing at her life also. Seemingly in this relationship, two wrongs do make a right. Bernie's luck begins to change, and its not what Shelly wants to see. Plus, Shelly has trouble of his own. He desperately wants Vegas to stay the way it was, but new Vegas is coming in the form of young college minds who have new ideas on how to present the city and its casino to a new generation of gamblers. Its nothing personal, as someone says during the film, their only trying to protect their investments. Anyone investing two hours into watching this superior character study of losers trying to become winners will be richly rewarded. This is a terrific film. If it had been made 50 years ago, it might have been film noir. Its that dark. But its powerful stuff, and highly recommended--one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. *****
Later,
Jeff
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