Cinema Basement

We bring Tony Scott month to an end with a very deep cut for him. If you've been following along and watching the films as we go through the month, consider this your final exam. Strangely this is his first film and one of his strangest. This is the only horror film Scott made and one of the strangest films of the '80s. The Hunger is basically about a very strange love triangle. Susan Sarandon plays Dr. Sarah Roberts, who is working with primates in an attempt to find a way to possibly reverse the aging process. She is approached by John Blaylock, played by the God himself David Bowie, who seems to age rapidly after Roberts denies his request for help. When she goes to find him, she is seduced by John's lover Miriam, played by the ravishing Catherine Deneuve. The Hunger is part of the wave of vampire films that came out of the '80s. They were slicker than the likes of the dark violent ones that came from the '70s, such as the violent Hammer Dracula films. Film...

The final post for Tony Scott month will be coming this weekend and will be a forgotten film just not on Friday. It's a weird one too so fair warning. So for Friday's actual post I want to quickly look at a fun forgotten horror film from 1997, Wishmaster . If I ask you to think of your favorite horror icons, who comes to mind? The classics maybe, like Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf Man, the Mummy. Or maybe you think of the horror legends of the '80s, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kruger, Chucky, Pinhead. I argue the Djinn should be regarded right up there with them. This guy is totally awesome and the actor, Andrew Divoff, is having a great time playing him. Wishmaster is about the djinn, an evil genie basically who is freed from captivity hundreds of years after being imprisoned. Of course any wish someone makes is twisted to be fatal to them or someone else. His psychic connection to Alex, the woman who freed him and if granted three wishes will bring about the...

A review by Brooks Rich This is kind of a forgotten film Friday in the middle of the week. Spy Game is a fantastic film and would work as a double feature with Enemy of the State . Both films deal with the corruption and back room dealings of intelligence agencies. Enemy of the State is probably a little more heightened than Spy Game is but they do go hand in hand. Our government has ulterior motives and will betray their own people to cover themselves. Spy Gam e simply tells this kind of story from within the agency. The film takes place in 1991. Brad Pitt plays CIA asset Tom Bishop, who is captured by the People's Liberation Army of China during an unsanctioned mission. Bishop is to be executed in 24 hours unless the US government claims him.  The CIA calls in his former mentor and soon to be retired Nathan Muir, played by the legendary Robert Redford. Muir suspects the CIA is looking to burn Bishop to protect a major trade agreement between China and the United States so ...

A review by Brooks Rich I said before that one of my favorite film genres is monsters eating people and that some of the best came to us in the '90s. My favorite of the genre is Deep Rising , already covered on this blog. A close second is Tremors and a close third to that is The Relic , directed by Peter Hyams and a totally fun if flawed monster movie. The Relic stars Penelope Ann Miller and Tom Sizemore, a troubled actor in real life but damn is he good when he can get his shit together. Miller plays Dr. Margo Green, an evolutionary biologist at the Chicago Museum of Natural History. A brutal murder at the museum brings in lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta of homicide, played by Sizemore. Of course there is pressure to solve the murder before a gala premiere at the museum, where the best and brightest of Chicago will attend. I wonder if a giant monster will attack and start wrecking shit? Oh yeah, it totally does. OK. Let me get this out of the way. Peter Hyams shot this fi...

A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman In my humble opinion this is the best revenge film ever made. Man on Fire is everything you want from a B-grade revenge movie but it’s cranked up so hard you are waiting for the whole thing to collapse. It is a film that revels in the odd beauty in Mexico City as much as it loves the strange darkness of the city. Tony Scott by this point had proven has abilities as a director but this is where he really shows his ability to press meaning into action something later directors of big budget star driven action films lose. Man on Fire is the story of John Creasy, a former military man suffering from depression looking to die, and his time working as a bodyguard for the daughter of a prominent mexican businessman during a time where kidnapping of children are at an all time high. This film is an adaption of a novel but it changes so much while novel and film take place in Europe, Scott pushes the film to where a rise in crime is currently happening at the t...

A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman I am really pushing the limits of this concept for this one. This isn’t an older flick that has become forgotten by time. This isn’t something that the cultural zeitgeist moved past that I wanted to talk about nor is it something that deeply reflects my personal experiences as a child growing up and discovering films. No this week I want to talk about a movie that is so immediately violent and angry, so immediately ready to tear everything down just to show the hypocrisy of it all, and most of all so immediately visually stunning when something isn’t it is stark and shocking. Assassination Nation could be this generation’s Heathers. This is a future cult classic looking for its cult and that is what I am aiming to do today. I need to help this film find an audience because if no one does it will be forgotten. This week we are aiming to combat that. Assassination Nation is the second film from Sam Levinson and it seems like in writing this he was furiou...

A review by Brooks Rich For the first time in Tony Scott month, we have a film being covered on forgotten film Friday. I didn't think most of his filmography could be called a forgotten film. Even Beverly Hills Cop 2 isn't forgotten. People just forget he directed it. The Fan , Scott's sports thriller, is probably forgotten but that film is so awful I don't want to even waste time thinking about it. The Last Boy Scout is probably forgotten but is startling bad but we will get there. So instead we come to the brutal 1990 revenge thriller aptly titled, Revenge . Kevin Costner stars as a recently retired Navy pilot who travels to Mexico to visit his old friend Tiburon "Tibey" Mendez, played by the legendary Anthony Quinn. An ill advised affair with Tibey's wife, played by Madeline Stowe, leads to a brutal act of retribution which then in turn leads to a violent and tragic third act. This does not look like he usual Tony Scott fare. His editing and sty...

A review by Brooks Rich We now arrive at the film I think really first showed Tony Scott's trademark editing. It was present in his other films but Enemy of the State really is held together by the chaotic editing he was known for. I am not saying that to talk shit on the film. I love this movie. This is a fun film and one of Will Smith's best performances. Smith is Robert Clayton Dean, a DC area lawyer who is sucked into the cover up of a politically motivated murder. Soon his entire life is being taken apart by a corrupt section of the NSA. Dean must turn to the mysterious Brill, played by the immortal Gene Hackman, to give him any chance of clearing his name and getting his life back. This is another one where I don't want to spoil any story beats. This is not a film to watch if you are paranoid about government surveillance. Scott does a great job of making it feel like a fully realized possibility. They can watch you and find you, anywhere you go. We see them ju...

Beverly Hills Cop II By Azzam Abdur-Rahman I opened with Domino. The most maximalists view of what is Tony Scott's style as he moved into the new millennium but to really talk about Tony Scott’s impact on Cinema we need to take a step back and look at his earliest work. When Tony Scott was a journeyman director who was just making any movie he got behind look beautiful. This movie to me is the first Michael Bay movie that wasn’t made by Michael Bay. The color palette, the use of music, the visual language all become part of the cake of major action films moving into the 90’s and to me Beverly Hills Cop 2 does this better than any other film. In 1987, Scott is coming off of Top Gun. He has really impressed Bruckheimer and Simpson and has shown their investment in advertising/music video directors has really paid off. Looking at the films they know they can push a sequel on that look back at the first Beverly Hills Cop. That first film is directed by Martin Brest who is a solid di...

A review by Brooks Rich Tony Scott month is still rolling on and we arrive at one of his most underrated films, Deja Vu . One of his most underrated films, Deja Vu . Ha, see what I did there. I love this movie and I don't get why it doesn't get the love it deserves. It's another team up between Scott  and Denzel Washington, one of my all time favorite director and actor team ups in cinema history, and in my opinion this is the second best movie of their's after Crimson Tide . Deja Vu is not only a great action movie it is a high concept science fiction thriller. Washington is Doug Carlin, an ATF agent investigating the bombing of a ferry in New Orleans. Carlin is approached by an FBI agent, played by Val Kilmer, who asks for his assistance in a top secret program, an experimental program that uses data collected from surveillance to recreate past events. Carlin wants to focus on the life of a woman who he thinks was murdered by the bombers. It is soon discovered it...

A review by Chris Lee After nearly 20 films, Marvel has finally done it! They have a woman in the title role of one of their superhero films! Yay! To get this part of the review out of the way, address the irritating non-controversy surrounding its social implications, and move on to what matters, I will say this: It’s about. God. Damn. Time. NOW, Onward to adventure! Captain Marvel is another successful, if muted, entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Directed capably by duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the film moves along at a brisk pace while dumping tons of exposition and silly new pronouns on the audience like a track-runner shouting something incomprehensible to a cheering fan as they sprint by. Luckily it’s all repeated enough to keep track. Skrulls, Kree, Starforce, Vers, Mar-Vell. The list goes on and Captain Marvel does a great job of making sure you’re not lost on the who, what, where, when, and why. With some serviceable action, an excellent, though unsurprising...

We wrap up the Lorene Scafaria trilogy with the delightful under seen comedy, The Meddler . This is a very simple charming comedy about a woman grieving the death of her husband nearly two years ago who can't help but meddle in her daughters life. As she meddles and grieves her husband she finds there are people in her life and her daughter's life who actually need her help. Susan Sarandon plays Marnie the mom and this is her show. She is so good in this and brings some depth to a character that would be a nuisance in almost any other film. Scafaria is really good at making us see the other side of a character who we assume will be annoying. Take Marnie for example. At the start of the film she comes across as an annoying over protective mother with no concept of boundaries who thinks salt bagels fix everything, a running joke in the movie. But then we come to see how complicated this character is. Marnie feels guilty over the money she received from her husband's death, ...

A review by Brooks Rich We're kind of doing a mini-directors month here in March as we have a triple feature of writer director Lorene Scafaria, someone more people need to be aware of. No one is writing screenplays like her right now and she deserves to have much more attention. We need more films from her. . She is what I want from writers like Diablo Cody. Azzam has already covered Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and now we have her directorial debut, the amazing Seeking a Friend For the End of the World . I love this movie so much. It's one of those that if I see it streaming or catch it on TV, I have to watch it. The film is about two people, Steve Carell, who is amazing in this, and Keira Knightley, the best she's ever been, who form a friendship in the last days of Earth as an asteroid named Matilda approaches. It's a planet killer and there's no chance of survival. But the film isn't about trying to find someway to survive. It's about the...

A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman “Why would you start here?!” Should be exactly what you are saying when thinking about a retrospective on Tony Scott. We are gonna cover his films often but this movie is one of those movies that I think was unfairly trashed. It is Tony Scott at his most Tony Scott. You can tell in every frame he is so happy and having such a great time. I think it’s great to start with a film where a director has openly said this was one of their favorite films to work on and go from there. It’s 2005 when Domino drops. This is one of those films that it is shocking a studio even made it. Domino is the story of Domino Harvey, the rebellious daughter of a old school movie star who went from being a model to being a bounty hunter. By concept alone you should be 100% sold. This film could have easily been in the lexicon of Fight Club but for women. She is a tough and misunderstood woman finding a place in the world where most are forgotten. That everything about her...

A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman I fucking love this movie. I don’t normally cuss here but this film is one of those flicks I could watch on repeat forever. It feels funny that this is a movie that Brooks reminded me of because in some way this movie never felt like it left me. I think about it often. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is far from a perfect movie though. It is an oddly colorless New York that documents the rise of gentrification through the eyes of some witty teenagers but if you push that thought away you find a beautiful film about the power of one night when you are young. How a fleeting moment of joy can change the way you see your future and for that reason I want to talk about it. If you do not know the plot to this film it is about Nick, sad sack middle class bassist from New Jersey and Norah, an upper class girl also from New Jersey, who both end up going into New York City to find a band who only plays secret shows. That is the most general way of describing...

Roll Tide! Like American Gangste r I am surprised I waited so long to write about this film. This is another one of my all time favorite movies and the perfect kickoff to Tony Scott month. There's two submarine movies in the running for the greatest of all time, Das Boot and Crimson Tide . Das Boot is a brilliant film and I'll get to it today. But today we look at Crimson Tide , not only one of Tony Scott's absolute best films, in my opinion it is his best film, but also a showcase for two of the greatest actors of all time. This film is of course led by the legendary Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington, two actors known for being the biggest presence on screen. Here they are going toe to toe as they try to gain dominance. Crimson Tide takes place on the USS Alabama, a nuclear submarine on high alert as radicals in Russia threaten to take over the country and compromise the Russian nuclear arsenal. Hackman is captain Ramsay, the nonsense leader of the Alabama and Washingt...

Director’s Corner: Tony Scott Starting this month we will be highlighting one director a month. We will be looking at those filmmakers who have secured a legacy for themselves one way or the other. These won’t always be the directors you think of when someone asks, who are the best directors of all time? We are going beyond guys like Scorsese, Spielberg, Hitchcock, and Zemeckis. We’ll cover some women too. Props to Kathryn Bigelow.  But we begin with one of the coolest and slickest directors of all time, Tony Scott. He definitely had a style all his own and the editing in his action films clearly have an influence on modern action cinema. The world of film suffered a huge loss when on August 19, 2012 Tony Scott jumped off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in LA. It is still unclear why he did this and it’s a tragedy on every level. But we don’t want this to be sad. We are here to honor one of the greatest directors of all time. Yeah, we here at Cinema Basement hold Tony Scott in ...

A review by Brooks Rich I don't think they make teen comedies the way they used to. That probably makes me sound like an old man complaining about the damn kids who won't get off his lawn. But it's true. There really doesn't seem to be a market for the R rated teen sex comedy anymore. They aren't coming out as often as they were back then. The American Pie franchise was probably the last real successful teen comedy franchise. Now it's dystopian and vampire films aimed at teens. American Pie is probably the big most remembered teen sex comedy of the '90s. My favorite however is 1998's Can't Hardly Wait . Can't Hardly Wait takes place over the course of one night at a wild house party for the graduating seniors of Huntington Hillside. A variety of stories unfold during the night, such as a white rapper kid trying to get laid and the resident nerdy kid and his friends trying to get revenge on the high school jock who tormented them. There...

A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman So this is a weird week. As a writer on this film blog I started this series because of a day where I was super depressed I re-watched a film I forgot about. There is often a sense of nostalgia in this series. I am so precious with these moments in film that deeply affected me but very rarely resonated with the world at large. This weekend I didn’t have a film to write from this perspective. I was devoid of something to say because I was saving my mental energy for something coming down the pike here which may or may not have already been dropped. So on a Tuesday night my lovely fiancé says “We are watching Never Been Kissed!” I hope I am known on this film blog as the rom-com guy but that night I wasn’t feeling it. What I was treated to was a charming movie but not a masterpiece. So now you may be asking “what is the point of this then!” The point is Never Been Kissed is an example of a movie you can never make again. Never Been Kissed’s plot lives i...