THE ANDERSON TAPES

title: THE ANDERSON TAPES

year: 1971

cast: Sean Connery, Val Avery, Martin Balsam, Christopher Walken, Ralph Meeker, Dyan Cannon

rating: **1/2

Very cool set-up as a gaggle of ex-convicts rob an apartment building (in the future?) replete with wall-to-wall videotapes. How the heist is planned as Sean Connery gathers his gang including a young Christopher Walken, a flaming-gay Martin Balsam, and several others, fares better than when the rushed caper goes down. Despite an annoying score, sounding like BOOKER T & THE MG's on Prozac, there's some terrific visuals; Noir staple Ralph Meeker is fun to watch as an overly-goofy Irish cop; and a side-story involving Val Avery as a doomed mafioso adds needed residual suspense that ultimately, along with the overall conclusion, is somewhat of a let-down... But it's an interesting ride.

$ (DOLLARS)

title: $ (DOLLARS)

year: 1971

cast: Warren Beatty, Goldie Hawn, Scott Brady, Robert Webber

writer/director: Richard Brooks

rating: *

Insufficient funds. I needed seasick pills from the endless running around. Nothing mattered, little connected, at least that I cared about. I couldn't even tell you the plot. Don't invest in this one.

LOOKIN' TO GET OUT

year: 1982

cast: Jon Voight, Burt Young, Ann Margaret, Angelina Jolie

director: Hal Ashby

rating: **1/2

The first fifty minutes with Jon Voight and Burt Young as two unlucky gamblers talking about life and losing (one in the same for these guys) is very entertaining. They go from L.A. to Las Vegas, get set up in a Vegas Suite, and the freestyle fun continues as the fish out of water live it up. Then the bottom falls out when the film becomes a stupid "chase" film as our two lovable losers spend the last half of the film running away from the two fat silly thugs they shook in L.A. with a really bad electronic score in the background. Should have remained a character-study, and dropped the pointless action, which wasn't suspensful anyhow. Mostly known for a cameo by Voight's real-life daughter Angelina Jolie as his fictional one.

VALKYRIE

year: 2009

rating: **

Okay, Tom Cruise is... Tom Cruise. That's it. Gone are the days of "Taps" when he could actually be another person, a character PLAYED BY Tom Cruise not TOM CRUISE as himself AS another character. This film is no different. He's Tom Cruise playing a guy who wants to overthrow Hitler. Now the intentions of this man (based on real life) and his comrades, all part of the Nazi party, in this film are to rid the world of Hitler to save lives, but historically they wanted to save Germany and Socialism (their brand of it anyway) and not LOSE the war but instead to END IT with their party intact (without being run by a madman). It's okay to turn these fellows into superheroes because killing Adolph would have been a super-duper thing... and director Bryan Singer has made a great superhero film (XMAN) and a really bad one (SUPERMAN RETURNS) so he can't be blamed for over-the-top heroics, right? A lot of the time, though, the modernized high-octane action just doesn't fit this film, which tries to be a "suspense packed with everything".

A FINE MESS

year: 1986

cast: Ted Danson, Howie Mandel, Paul Sorvino

director: Blake Edwards

rating: **

For a bad movie this wasn't THAT awful. A lot of running around and hijinks and pratfalls and all things Blake Edwards. Ted Danson and Howie Mandel make an odd team - sometimes it's not apparent which one is the straight man in the pair. It would seem Mandel would play the goofy sidekick but he's about as smooth with the ladies as Danson, only Danson gets more of them. Ted's basically playing "Sam Malone" on speed. The plot involves... oh who cares about the plot - it's just a screwball comedy sendup of the Laurel and Hardy films and overall is a fairly decent time waster.

BE COOL

title: BE COOL

year: 2005

cast: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, The Rock, Harvey Keitel, Vince Vaughan

rating: *1/2

For a movie that pokes fun at bad sequels and corporations, this is a bad sequel which is as corporate as can be. John Travolta returns as the ever-cool "Chili Palmer" and, unlike his turn in "Get Shorty" (perhaps his best performance ever), he's simply going through the motions. We get a budding love story with Uma Thurman for all those "Pulp Fiction" fans who wanted to see them hook up, and even a VERY FAMILIAR dance sequence to boot. The plot centers on the music industry as opposed to the movie industry, and there are no decent bad guys (Vince Vaughan as a "wigger" and Harvey Keitel are weak), no decent almost-bad-guys-who-turn-good (Cedric the Entertainer is even weaker), and the someone-is-in-the-house-because-they-purposely-left-the-TV-on, which was great in the original, is overused to the hilt. Attempts of mazy-double-crossings that Elmore Leonard (and Quentin Tarantino for that matter) do so well are all but col de sacs leading to dead ends. But I gotta give credit to The Rock. Although I am not a fan his turn as a gay bodyguard who wants to be an actor is the only decent character.

CITY OF GHOSTS

title: CITY OF GHOSTS

year: 2002

cast: Matt Dillon, James Caan

writer/director: Matt Dillon

rating: **1/2

Matt Dillon, who has always been one of my favorite actors, as a director is obviously very influenced by film noir: a stranger in a strange land being used by someone he trusts while not exactly being sure about what's going on around him. This is the basic situation, and the setting is modern day Vietnam. The subtle villian, James Caan, a con-man who swindled people in an insurance scam, doesn't have enough to do. He's a mysterious character but his mystery just isn't that dynamic. Either is the story or the outcome. First-time director Dillon shows the landscape of Vietnam a whole lot, and plays actual music from that region throughout, yet you never feel you're in this place... you're merely watching it, rather than living it.