The 2008 Movie Genre of the Month Club

[ZapRowsdower]

King of New York (1990, Abel Ferrara)

Christopher Walken is the main attraction of this film. I'd say it's one of the finer performances of his career. Ferrara has a distinct directorial style which I thought worked very well for this film. Laurence Fishburne played a much different role than what I'm used to seeing him play, but he was much younger back then. Very good film, I thought. 8/10

L.A. Confidential (1997, Curtis Hanson)

One of my all-time favorites. Can't go wrong when you have Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey and Guy Pearce in the same movie - which was also a very well-written love letter to Film-Noir and 1950's Los Angeles. By the way, excellent production design. The time period was recreated beautifully. 10/10

[Heineken Skywalker]

HEIST (2001)

Gene Hackman plays the leader of a gang of thieves. As is the case with most movies in this genre, he wants to retire, but is forced to pull off just one more job.
David Mamet's script is full of twists and turns, so along with the great script, you get many moments of who's going to screw over who.
The movie is just okay, in fact I saw it in a theater back in 2001 and had completely forgotten about it, but I find Hackman to be one of our most watchable actors, no matter what type of role he's playing, and he's as great here as he always is. See it mostly for him and co-stars Danny DeVito, Delroy Lindo and Sam Rockwell.

6.5/10

[slayrrr666]

Metro-1997
A hostage negotiator and his ex-SWAT member protegee trail a jewel theif over San Franscico after the murder of a fellow police officer. The first Eddie Murphy action film I've ever seen, and it was better than what I thought. Uses the cliched story that has been done to death before, but the comedy here is what helps this one. Much funnier than expected, mainly the word-play during the training sessions, including one of the greatest hostage-negotiating training scenes that was pretty funny. The action isn't that bad, including another really fun if brief chase scene (why is it that San Francisco always has great chases through it's streets? It's haunted me for years) that I found it enjoyable.
8.5/10

[Heineken Skywalker]

MR. BROOKS (2007)

Kevin Costner plays a respected businessman, husband and father, who has a terrible secret, he is living a double life as a serial killer. After a two year hiatus from killing, his alter-ego Marshall (William Hurt) reappears to coax him back into killing. There are several subplots, 1) a police detective (Demi Moore) on his trail, going through her own issues with a divorce in the works, as well as a criminal she put away, having recently escaped from prison and vowing revenge on her. 2) A young man (Dane Cook) who witnessed Mr. Brooks' latest killing and blackmails him into letting him come along on his next killing and 3) Brooks' daughter is home from college under strange circumstances.
That's a lot of story for one movie, but I thought most of it worked. Critics weren't too kind to this one, but I found it pretty entertaining. I thought Costner and Hurt had really good chemistry as two halves of the same guy and were actually kind of funny, especially whenever they shared humorous moments and did that maniacal laugh.

8/10

[slayrrr666]

Blown Away-1994
A classic from my action-oriented days, actually holding up much better than expected. The cat-and-mouse games are pretty fun, mainily due to the fact that it never really does anything out of the ordinary to set-up the relationship, as it's not that quickly done, benefitting from being spelled out nicely and given time to really take-hold due to the early scenes. Of course, the main reason why I used to love this was the finale, a nice brawl through the ship capped off with one of the greatest explosions in movie history, which I still contend is impressive having seen a ton of them (mainly through specifically seeing films that did that a lot) but I still liked it.
9/10

U.S. Marshalls-1997
Not one I was really impressed with, since it seemed like it was just a remake of The Fugitive with different characters instead of being a sequel. Not that there was some fun to be had at times, as the inital chase and the foot-chase through the city is pretty fun, but it's mostly just got that been there, done that aroma to it that didn't really grab me. Of course, the commercial breaks didn't help, but it still wasn't one that I enjoyed as much.
6.5/10

[slayrrr666]

Hot Fuzz-2007
As a huge fan of "Shaun," this one is going in with high expectations that are succesfully met in here. Some fantastic humor with the usual Shaun touches in here, including the personal favorite when they're going over the evidence during a montage sequence and come up with an answer that's completely bogus, generating some pretty good laughs. Some of the stalking and killing scenes are defnitely comfortable for the horror scenes, including the flower shop kill and the sequence at the fair, providing some nice blood and gore into the mix beyond the usual action-film standards of gunshot wounds. The action is fun and over-the-top, plenty of bullet-hits and things blowing up, exactly what I like in these kinds of films. A bit overlong, but not a real detriment.
9.5/10

Set it Off-1996
Four urban women decide to start robbing banks in order to get ahead in life, and must deal with the police on their tail and their own lives away from the danger. Not that bad at all, some of the robberies aren't that bad, including some of the later ones when more experience results in better performances, and then the final one in the big bank results in a really great shootout complete with lots of action and gunfire. Spends a little too much time on unnecessary subplots, including the lame romance angle that goes nowhere, but I've seen much worse, even in the urban genre.
8/10

[ZapRowsdower]

I've been having a busy few days and haven't been able to keep up with my movie-watching as much as I'd like... but I just got back from watching:

Lakeview Terrace (2008, Neil LaBute)

Being a writer myself, I gotta say that in spite of a major unanswered question that pops up as a result of the climax, the screenplay is damn near perfect. I really enjoyed how they used last year's Southern California wildfires (which I remember vividly) to push the screenplay forward. The dialogue was nice, and the characters were likeable. That is why it was such a bad idea to put Neil LaBute in the director's chair. The writers seemed to want to make Samuel L. Jackson's character as human as possible. A very bold, interesting move. LaBute, on the other hand was more interested in giving him awkward staring moments that would place him on par with Snidley Whiplash. I understand D.J. Caruso was busy with Eagle Eye, but... LaBute? Really? Have these guys even SEEN the Wicker Man remake? Well, in spite of LaBute's sabotage, this film wasn't half bad. The actors did their jobs well enough, and the screenplay was pretty damn fantastic. 7/10

[Heineken Skywalker]

NATURAL BORN KILLERS (1994)

Mickey and Mallory (Woody Harrelson & Juliette Lewis) are a pair of outcasts who find each other, become lovers, and hit the road, becoming serial killers and slaughtering folks for fun. Along the way, they become media darlings and celebrated as kind of folk heroes.
Harrelson gives a decent performance, and Robert Downey Jr. is kind of fun as an Australian talk show host exploiting the couple for ratings, but the movie is kind of a mess. Director Oliver Stone is constantly editing and changing film stock and filming techniques, going from black and white to color, even incorporating animation from time to time. Quentin Tarantino, who wrote the original story, has pretty much disowned the film due to the way it was rewritten and frankly, his KILL BILL movies, which also incorporated a lot of the same filming techniques, was done way better than ....KILLERS.

5/10

YOU KILL ME (2007)

Ben Kingsley plays an alcoholic hitman who botches an assignment and is sent to San Francisco to clean up. While there, he starts going to AA meetings, takes a temporary job at a funeral home and falls for a woman (Téa Leoni). Kingsley and Leoni have good chemistry, with Leoni especially displaying a great sense of deadpan comic timing. The movie has some great dry humor.
As far as recent hitman comedies go, it's no IN BRUGES, but it's worth watching.

8/10

MADE (2001)

Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn are best friends who are sent on an assignment to New York by a crime boss.
Light and quick-paced with Vaughn doing what he does best, being loud, fast-talking and obnoxious. You can tell Vaughn and Favreau are good friends in real life as they have great chemistry.

6.5/10

BEVERLY HILLS COP (1984)

Eddie Murphy is hilarious in one of his most memorable roles, Axel Foley. He's a Detroit police detective who is visited by an old friend who's been working in Beverly Hills. When the friend is killed, Axel heads for Beverly Hills to try to find his friend's killers. When the flick changes locales from Detroit to Beverly Hills, we get one of the ultimate "fish out of water" stories.
This movie is full of classic scenes and lines of dialog, many of them improvised by the actors.
Bronson Pinchot steals the couple of scenes he's in as an employee at an art gallery with a hilarious accent, and look for Damon Wayans in a funny quick cameo as "the banana man". But Murphy owns this movie. He was just at the top of his game here and it's one of the iconic comedy performances of all time.
The movie is a good action flick too with an extended gun battle as it's climax.
As funny today as the first time I watched it back in '84. An 80's classic.

10/10

[slayrrr666]

Man of the House-2004
This is the Tommy Lee Jones one, just wanted to point it out beforehand because of the family comedy of the same title, and wanted no issues. Anyway, I kinda enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, the comedy in here is pretty nice, there's some nice action toward the end with a decent car chase (at least compared to what I saw earlier) and it kept me interested the whole way through, and it wasn't because of any of the girls prancing around in their underwear for most of the running time either. I call that a bonus, and a job well-done.
8/10

I'm Gonna Get You, Sucka-1988
Having only seen a small hand-ful of the blaxploitation films this one is spoofing but knowing full-well what they contain, this one was a real treat. About a group of Vietnam veterans who take to the streets with their old guerilla tactics to take out a gangleader who has corrupted their old neighborhood. The comedy was again really good, the action was nice and over-the-top and there was even a rather nice element of sleaze throughout, which also never hurts a film. Some of the jokes got a little tiresome as it went on, but it's still not all that bad at all.
7.5/10

Ronin-1998
I'm gonna go ahead and just say this: the only reason for this one is the car chases. That's the only thing, beyond the one or two gory deaths on display, that gave me any hope of entertainment. It's just too boring and I never really cared about anything else that was going on. Just give me the car chases and ignore everything else. Luckily, the car chases are so good they rescue the film somewhat, but not fully enough.
5.5/10

[Heineken Skywalker]

An update. The scores for this month so far.

September: COPS AND ROBBERS

Heineken Skywalker = 22
Slayrrr666 = 22
ZapRowsdower = 14
Bartwald = 1

[LivingDeadGirl]

Over the past week or so:

Alpha Dogs 2/4- Meh
The Departed- One in my unwatched DVD stack
Reservoir Dogs- Haven't watched it in awhile so I figured I'd drag it out since it would count this month.

[slayrrr666]

Reno 911: Miami-2007
Forgot to add this one yesterday, which wasn't all that bad but I just didn't really enjoy most of it. It seemingly consisted of a loose assortment of sketches thrown together that had the vaguest sense of coherence to what the plot dictated should be, and that left me feeling somewhat bored through most of the film. Yeah, there's a couple of humurous bits scattered here and there, but it's overall premise just didn't work for me.
5/10

The Lookout-2007
A traumatized ex-high school athlete takes a job as a janitor in a bank, where he gets drawn into a planned heist by a gang of criminals. Frankly, played as more of drama for my tastes, which included lots of scenes of them hanging around drawing plans for their heist or trying to get him acclimated to being around them, and it's not all that interesting. Lots of dialogue and very little action. Once the manipulations start and the heist goes off, it gets a little better but I just couldn't get into it. I know a lot of people on here are going to really like it, though.
Since it wasn't my kind of film, but I recognized that others will:
7/10, but personally it was more 2.5/10

[ZapRowsdower]

Donnie Brasco (1997, Mike Newell)

Johnny Depp and Al Pacino alone make this one worth watching. But there were also fine performances from Michael Madsen and Anne Heche to be enjoyed here. This was a smart, suspenseful gangster flick that one would come to expect from someone like Martin Scorsese. It was excellent. 9/10

[Heineken Skywalker]

LETHAL WEAPON (1987)

Like BEVERLY HILLS COP and DIE HARD, the original LETHAL WEAPON is one of the iconic cop movies of the 80's. 3 movies that spawned an entire industry of imitators.
Danny Glover is Roger Murtaugh, a just turned 50, by-the-book police detective and family man. Mel Gibson is Martin Riggs, his new partner. A younger, suicidal cop who is trained in martial arts, is an expert sharpshooter, and recently lost his wife in a car accident.
The case they're working on, the death of a young girl which has ties to drug smuggling, is almost secondary to the great chemistry and dialog between the two main characters.
Murtaugh: "God hates me."
Riggs: "Hate him back. Works for me."

The movie is edgy, but has plenty of humor, is tightly paced, loaded with some great action scenes, including a climactic fist fight, and is the buddy cop film that all others would be measured by.
Richard Donner's best film since the original SUPERMAN (1978).

10/10

[slayrrr666]

We Own the Night-2007
I wanted to like this one, it sounded really good and I thought it would provide some nice action scenes, but it's just way too slow-going for me. The fact that there's a lot of different conversations going on about what to do next, as the gang war starts breaking down, it's all quite dull for me. There was some saving grace to be had in a quite spectacular car chase through the rain which was one of the best non-action film car chases I've ever seen and is enough of a plus to have made this one worthwhile. However, just like The Lookout, you guys are going to like it more than I did.
Maybe a 6/10