Cinema Basement

 A retrospective by Brooks Rich This is one of those films I just can't believe isn't more well known. It is one of the best modern films about Las Vegas and also one of the best Neo-noirs. The early 2000s was a weird time for film and during that transition from the '90s a lot of indie films like this popped up. The Cooler is one of my favorites form around that time, not only for it's take on Neo-noir but for it's subversion of the Vegas/gambling genre.  William H. Macy plays a man named Bernie, a professional cooler whose bad luck is used to stop the winning streak of someone on a heater at one of the tables. He cools the table as it is. When he falls in love with a waitress, played by Maria Bello, his luck begins to change and he loses his ability to cool tables, putting him in the crosshairs of his shady bossy, a chilling Alec Baldwin.  Macy is one of our best actors and I feel he doesn't get the recognition he deserves. He should have won an Oscar for his ...

 A retrospective by Brooks Rich Good to bring this segment back but oh god this film. The year is 1981 and British director John Derek makes this film under the Tarzan license that is essentially padding built around scenes of his wife Bo Derek being naked and fucking Tarzan. Clearly yes, this film was made just so horny dudes could go see Bo Derek naked but my God, is it also just dull as dishwater. And the fact that the director is married to Bo just makes the whole thing feel sleazy.  Bo Derek deserves better than this. Well first she deserves not to be filmed by her borderline creeper husband, ignoring the fact she's a producer on this, but she was an icon of her time. Yes of course she was a sex symbol but she was talented too. Check out the movie 10, which is pretty good. She has nothing to do here but flatly deliver her lines and wait for John to tell her to take her clothes off for a nude swim or for a sex scene with Tarzan, played by wannabe action star Miles 'o' K...

 A retrospective by Brooks Rich Going to cover this film differently than I would other films in a director's month. I am not the biggest fan of Out of Africa. I have no beef with it but as far as prestigious Oscar films go it's not one of my favorites. The '80s were full of these big sweeping Best Picture winners and I think films like Gandhi and Amadeus are much better than Out of Africa. Out of Africa is that film that might come to mind when someone thinks of a big Oscar winner that fades over time. Nothing wrong with it but really, this was the best film of the year? But I think Out of Africa is a solid film and it's more of what makes Pollack an interesting director. Even with a big sweeping epic like this, he knows to back the camera off at the right point and let the story play out. Nothing can ruin a character moment or a quiet story beat in an epic more than an intrusive camera. Sure there is skill in making a big movie. But there is also skill in being subtle...

 A retrospective by Forrest Humphrey  After the original 1954 masterpiece Gojira , the next step in the franchise was an immediate sequel in 1955 called Godzilla Raids Again . I might cover that film someday, but after this rush, Toho would sit on Godzilla for seven years. King Kong creator Willis H O'Brian had long tried to get more King Kong movies but had met with little to no success. At one point, O'Brian penned a story to pit Kong against the Frankenstein Monster, but his producer actually went behind his back and gave the project to Toho. O'Brian's original story and the Frankenstein Monster were totally scrapped and what we got was this film: 1962's King Kong vs. Godzilla .  The story here is actually quite paired down compared to the other films I've covered. To whit, a pharmaceutical corporation wants to boost its ratings on tv, and so the head of the company decides to find a giant monster for a publicity stunt, and they find King Kong living on a t...

An introduction by Forrest Humphrey Some might remember my introduction to this site was completing three of a planned four review series on Godzilla movies (I swear I will look at Shin Godzilla at some point, that movie deserves it). Well, with the news that Godzilla vs. Kong has been moved up to a March 26 release both to theaters and streaming, I think its a good time to look at the movies that lead us here.      Starting with the original 1962 “King Kong vs. Godzilla” I will follow with a look at all three previous Monsterverse films: Godzilla (2014), Kong Skull Island and Godzilla King of the Monsters, and possibly a bonus look at the very first American attempt at Godzilla with the 1998 film since we can't really talk about American Godzilla movies without taking a look at the very first one. My feelings on all these films are decidedly more mixed but they do warrant the dives I enjoy giving the franchise, even the middling or poor films often have, at least, intere...

  A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahmann 2020 gave us a lot of movies that disappeared into the ether.  Because of this a movie I was excited about fell to the wayside. That film was The High Note. A movie about a diva singer in the twilight of her career and her assistant dreaming of producing a record that will never come from her. I love movies about people with dreams that don’t often go the way they would like but The High Note surpassed my expectations. First let’s talk about the direction. Nisha Ganatra is on a roll careers wise. She directed Late Night for Mindy Kaling after replacing Paul Feig and she turned in an assured film that felt modern and also incredibly respectful of what comedies of that nature used to do. All of that strength came back here. No character is wasted. No moment unimportant. The movie moves in a way that everything if a breadcrumb to how small the world is especially the world of music.  It’s powerfully understated.  The acting is also ...

 An editorial by Azzam Abdur-Rahmann Editors note: Forgot to post this before the year ended. Oops. That's on the editor, not Azzam In a few hours we will be done with this wretched year. And while some catharsis will come with this a lot of pain still remains, one wound still keeps. We are a movie blog and to some degree the art form and watching habits we once held are gone. As we start this decade we start it without a Christmas where the movies are available to us. Theaters in most major American markets are still closed. But let’s talk about the good. I know I am normally mister doom and gloom but we have a lot of good that happened this year. Upside 1: Streaming Movies became relevant! I don’t know about y’all but Hulu, Netflix and Amazon originals don’t matter to me if they are shows. For so long I didn’t watch many of them and ignored them outright. 2020 took me and changed that. Hulu release Happiest Season which was legitimately amazing and probably would have been a slee...

 A retrospective by Brooks Rich I think the two best films about journalism ever made are All the President's Men and Spotlight . They are stunning explorations about the fight for the truth journalists go through and the exposure of the truth no matter what. The journalists are seen as heroes, making sure we the public know the truth no matter what. Syndey Pollack's 1981 Absence of Malice shows a different side of the journalism business.  Sally Field is a reporter for the Miami Herald who publishes a story saying that a local liquor wholesaler with a shady past named Michael Gallagher, played by the immortal Paul Newman, is being investigated for the disappearance and suspected murder of a local union official after she sees a report about it left on the desk of a federal prosecutor, played by a shifty Bob Balaban. Gallagher's life is turned upside down and people around him are affected by the unsubstantiated story.  Right off the bat, I want to say that I think right...

 A retrospective by Brooks Rich Based on the novel of the same name by Nelson Demille, The General's Daughter, at first glance this might look like a standard thriller from the late '90s. It has all the hallmarks of a slick but potentially forgettable thriller of the time, the film version of an airport thriller. John Travolta plays an army investigator who is working undercover at a base in Georgia. He is called in to assist when the titular general's daughter is found tied to the ground, naked, possibly raped, and strangled. Teaming up with a rape counselor/investigator played by Madeleine Stowe he searches for the killer but finds a dark underbelly on both the base and in the life of the victim.  Travolta is doing some of his best work here as he's on the cusp of embracing Scientology and going on to make Battlefield Earth, one of cinema's greatest disasters. He and Stowe have good chemistry and director Simon West, of Con Air fame, has a good eye. He shoots the ...

 A retrospective by Brooks Rich Andrew Davis is one of my favorite directors and is someone I don't think gets the love they deserve. I assume he will get his own month one day. He has been covered on this blog before, also for Forgotten Film Friday, with the excellent '90s thriller A Perfect Murder. Today we will take a look at his sadly forgotten 1989 political thriller, The Package, which at first glance might seem like a pretty standard action film in the last year of the '80s, before Hollywood entered a bizarre transition period for a few years.  Gene Hackman is John Gallagher, an Army sergeant who is assigned with escorting a prisoner named Walter Henke, Tommy Lee Jones, overseas from Berlin to the United States. Gallagher is set up and Henke escapes and soon Gallagher is on the trail of a plot to start World War III, with Henke as a possible major player, This film plays more like one of the paranoia thrillers from the '60s and '70s, films like The Manchurian...

A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman When I was a young bucks I used to obsess over the films made by the Asylum. If you don’t know who in gods green earth I am talking about I’ll say one word “Sharknado” before Sci-Fi snatched them up to make low budget originals they were gaming bad moms at Blockbuster making cheap versions of blockbusters they called mock busters. The movies were made on shoestring budgets and tried to deliver something in the vein of the films they “borrowed” from.  This was a Rodger Corman factory if I had ever seen one.  So it’s not shocking a great director who can deliver films on time and well under budget but make them good would come from that hellscape. Unpregnant is the 10th film from director Rachel Lee Goldenburg and god damn does it show that she cut her teeth making shit cinematic with nothing. A buddy comedy about two friends driving to get one an abortion shouldn’t be fun. It shouldn’t have energy too it. It should feel like the stakes are alw...

Happy New Year. Thank God 2020 is over. For the month of January we will be discussing the works, mostly directorial but maybe some acting, of the late great Sydney Pollack, who tragically passed away in 2008 after a private battle with cancer. Like when we covered John Badham, Pollack is a director with a more sure subdued visual eye, who knew when to back the camera off and let the story serve itself. There's an art to the subtle cinematic eye. We have covered Pollack twice before, both times he worked with Harrison Ford, Sabrina and Random Hearts. So enjoy this tribute and exploration of the works of Sydney Pollack.