Focus on Film & Television Reviews and writings about these subjects. As well as Pop Culture at times. With a bit of an edge and some color
Directed By: Rashid Johnson
Written By: Suzan Lori-Parks
Based on the Novel By: Richard Wright
Cinematography: Matthew Libatique
Editor: Brad Turner
Cast: Ashton Sanders, Kiki Layne, Margaret Qualley, Nick Robinson, Bill Camp, Elizabeth Marvel, David Alan Grier, Sanaa Lathan, Lamar Johnson
A young African-American living in Chicago enters into a seductive new world of money and power after he is hired as a chauffeur for an affluent businessman. Continue reading “NATIVE SON (2019)”
Directed By: Roman Polanski
Written By: Yasmina Reza & Roman Polanski
Based on The Play By: Yasmina Reza
Translation By: Michael Katmis
Cinematography: Pawel Edelman
Editor: Herve De Luze
Cast: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz
In New York’s Brooklyn Bridge park, eleven year old Zachary strikes his eleven year old classmate Ethan. The boy’s parents learn of the fight and meet to deal with the incident. Although the meeting starts civilized, it quickly degenerates after an unfortunate incident, and soon, their meeting is not only about their boys’ fight, but also the couple’s fitness as parents.
Directed By: Barbet Schroeder
Written By: Nicholas Kazan
Based on the book By: Alan Dershowitz
Cinematography By: Luciano Tovoli
Editor: Lee Percy
Cast: Jeremy Irons, Ron Silver, Glenn Close, Annabella Sciorra, Uta Hagen, Christine Baranski, Julie Hagerty, Fisher Stevens, Jack Gilpin, Felicity Huffman, Bill Camp, Lisa Gay Hamilton
Alan Dershowitz a brilliant professor of law is hired by wealthy socialite Claus von Bulow to attempt to overturn his two convictions for attempted murder of his extremely wealthy wife. Based on a true story the film concentrates not on the trial like other legal thrillers, but on the preparatory work that Dershowitz and his students put in as they attempt to disprove the prosecution’s case and achieve the Reversal of Fortune of the title. Continue reading “REVERSAL OF FORTUNE (1990)”
Cinematography & Directed By: John G. Avildsen
Written By: Norman Wexler
Editor: George T. Norris
Cast: Peter Boyle, Dennis Patrick, Susan Sarandon,
Bill, a wealthy businessman, confronts his junkie daughter’s drug-dealing boyfriend; in the ensuing argument, Bill kills him. Panic-stricken, he wanders the streets and eventually stops at a bar. There he runs into a drunken factory worker named Joe, who hates hippies, blacks, and anyone who is “different”, and would like to kill one himself. The two start talking, and Bill reveals his secret to Joe. Complications ensue.
Written & Directed By: Gilles Paquet-Brenner
Based on the book By: Gillian Flynn
Cinematography By: Barry Ackroyd
Editor: Douglas Fox & Billy Crise
Cast: Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hault, Chole Grace Moretz, Corey Stoll, Tye Sheridan, Drea De Matteo, Christina Hendricks, Sean Bridges, Andrea Roth
Libby Day was only eight years old when her family was brutally murdered in their rural Kansas farmhouse. Almost thirty years later, she agrees to revisit the crime and uncovers the wrenching truths that led up to that tragic night.
Directed by: Nick Cassevetes
Written By; Melissa Stack
Cinematography By: Robert Fraise
Editor: Jim Flynn & Alan Heim
Cast: Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Nicki Minaj, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Taylor Kinney, Kate Upton, Don Johnson, David Thornton
After discovering her boyfriend is married, Carly Whitten tries to get her ruined life back on track. But when she accidentally meets the wife he’s been cheating on, she realizes they have much in common, and her sworn enemy becomes her greatest friend. When yet another affair is discovered, all three women team up to plot mutual revenge on their cheating, lying, three-timing SOB.
Directed By: Anton Corbijn
Written By: Matt Greenhalgh
Based On The Book By: Deborah Curtis
Cinematography By: Martin Ruhe
Editor: Andrew Hulme
Music By: New Order
Cast: Sam Riley, Samantha Morton, Alexandria Maria Lara, Joe Anderson, James Anthony Pearson, Harry Treadaway, Toby Kebbell, Andrew Sheridan, Richard Bremmer
Ian Curtis is a quiet and rather sad lad who works for an employment agency and sings in a band called Warsaw. He meets a girl named Debbie whom he promptly marries and his band, of which the name in the meantime has been changed to Joy Division, gets more and more successful. Even though Debbie and he become parents, their relationship is going downhill rapidly and Ian starts an affair with Belgium Annik whom he met after one of the gigs and he’s almost never at home. Ian also suffers from epilepsy and has no-good medication for it. He doesn’t know how to handle the feelings he has for Debbie and Annik and the pressure the popularity of Joy Division and the energy performing costs him.
Written & Directed By: Luc Besson
Cinematography By: Thierry Arbogast
Editor: Julien Rey
Cast: Sasha Luss, Cillian Murphy, Luke Evans, Helen Mirren, Lera Abova, Alexander Petrov, Anna Krippa
Anna is a young beautiful girl who managed to make a career in the fashion world. More recently, she was a simple model from Moscow, but in a very short time she was able to enter the elite. Once she entered the hotel of an influential and very dangerous person, after which a whole mountain of corpses was discovered there. The girl is being interrogated by special services, but she has absolutely nothing to tell on this fact. She looks scared, and no one suspects her. Anna goes free and begins preparing for a new business. Under the guise of a fragile beauty, is hiding the world’s most dangerous assassin, who has not yet misfired.
Directed By: Eli Roth
Written By: Joe Carnahan
Based On The Novel By: Brian Garfield
Based On the original Motion Picture Screenplay By: Wendell Mayes
Cinematography: Rogier Stoffers
Editor: Mark Goldblatt & Yvonne Valdez
Cast: Bruce Willis, Elisabeth Shue, Vincent D’Onofrio, Camilla Morrone, Dean Norris, Beau Knapp, Kimberly Elise, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Len Cariou, Jack Kesy, Stephen McHattie, Jaslene Gonzalez
Dr. Paul Kersey is a surgeon who only sees the aftermath of his city’s violence as it’s rushed into his ER -until his wife and college-age daughter are viciously attacked in their suburban home. With the police overloaded with crimes, Paul, burning for revenge, hunts for his family’s assailants to deliver justice. As the anonymous slayings of criminals grabs the media’s attention, the city wonders if this deadly avenger is a guardian angel…or a grim reaper.
Directed By: Pierre Norel
Written By: Chad St. John
Cinematography By: David Lanzenberg
Editor: Frederic Thoraval
Cast: Jennifer Garner, John Gallagher Jr., John Ortiz, Juan Pablo Raba, Annie Ilonzeh, Cliff “Method Man” Smith, Tyson Ritter, Richard Cabral
An unidentified woman is engaged in a brutal fight with a man in a car and finally dispatches him with a shot to the head. Five years earlier, the same woman, Riley North, is working as a bank teller in Los Angeles struggling to make ends meet. Her husband Chris owns a failing mechanic shop. They have a ten-year-old daughter, Carly. Chris’ friend tries to talk him into robbing Diego Garcia, a powerful drug lord. Chris turns him down, but not before Garcia has already discovered his involvement and ordered his men to make an example of him. Riley and Chris take Carly out for pizza and to a carnival for her birthday since no one showed up to her party. At the carnival, Carly orders peppermint ice cream. As the family walks to the car, Diego’s men gun down her husband and daughter in a drive-by shooting. She is wounded, but survives.
Cut To The Chase 