An Overstuffed Script Leaves The Rainmaker Dry When it Comes to Engaging Characters

The Rainmaker may sound like the name of a supervillain origin story but it's actually a film adaptation of a John Grisham courtroom novel of the same name. The protagonist of the piece is young lawyer Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon). A devotee to the law and also the owner of a zoo, Baylor finds employment working for a famous lawyer by the name of Bruiser (Mickey Rourke). While working for Bruiser, Baylor partners up with Deck Shifflet (Danny DeVito), who teaches Baylor the tricks of ambulance chasing. Eventually, Baylor gets entangled in a trio of court cases, the most prominent of which involves helping a family take down an insurance company that denied their son a life-saving procedure.

Watch Out For Delightful Wacky Comedy in George of the Jungle

I have a very unorthodox relationship with the George of the Jungle movie. While the actual film is wacky enough to make it the last thing that'd ever traumatize a child, George of the Jungle's teaser trailer scared four-year-old Doug Laman something fierce. That first-half of the teaser where it's putting on airs of being something serious, complete with an ominous drumbeat, absolutely terrified me, I couldn't even watch the trailer long enough to make it to the second half where it's all revealed to be silly and harmless. I consumed everything with the Disney logo on it as a kid. That traumatic teaser trailer ensured that I didn't watch George of the Jungle until I was well into adulthood.

Con Air Is Anything-Goes Ridiculousness, Which Is A Good Thing

Con Air begins and ends as a music video for How Do I Live by Trisha Yearwood. In between, a lot of recognizable actors dodge explosions. This is the aptest summary for the directorial debut of Simon West, which might be the epitome of the 1990's American action movie filmmaking if Face/Off didn't exist. That doesn't mean Con Air is the absolute best American action movie made in this era, but it does embody a number of the traits found in abundance in this era. A plot clearly aping Die Hard. Lots of R-rated action. Dialogue that runs the gamut from cornball to unbelievably hokey. Recognizable landmarks going boom. Oh, and it's also pretty fun to watch.

The Fantastical Is Brought To Stunning Life In Princess Mononoke

A few months back, I wrote about how much better animation is when it's engaging in stories and visuals that you couldn't possibly replicate in reality. If you ever wanted perfect proof of this phenomenon, look no further than Princess Mononoke, a feature film hailing from the one and only Hayao Miyazaki, a filmmaker who is all about using animation to create creatures you couldn't possibly find in the real world. In the hands of Miyazaki and the animators at Studio Ghibli, fantasy truly looks fantastical. Does anything in My Neighbor Totoro, Ponyo or especially Spirited Away look remotely like anything you'd find in the real-world? Good luck translating those movies to an ultra-realistic live-action remake!

Air Force One Is Like Catnip For 1990s Blockbuster Fans Like Myself

You know what strain of blockbuster cinema I love? 1990s disaster movies! Chalk up my fondness for this subgenre partially to nostalgia, I distinctly remember spending my early teen years huddled over a small TV where I watch VHS copies of Armageddon, Volcano and Independence Day. More often than not, these films had cornball dialogue out the wazoo and broadly-drawn out characters...so why couldn't I get enough of them? Well, the heavy presence of explosions didn't hurt, but I also was drawn to the optimism that permeated so many of these movies. In the face of asteroids, aliens or whatever kind of disasters faced our planet, these movies depicted an array of human beings coming together to help one another and the human race. There's something noble and irresistibly hopeful about that.

The Watermelon Woman Looks at the Complexities of the Past in a Fascinating Manner

Headlines were made this summer when it was revealed that Rocketman would be the first major Hollywood production to feature an on-screen sex scene between two men. It was astonishing to imagine that high-profile American cinema had been produced for over a century and never, not even once, had such a scene transpired, but so is the sad state of LGBTQA+ representation in American cinema. Heck, it's not just films from major American movie studios that suffer from this problem, the indie American cinema took ages for proper representation even when it comes to individuals behind the camera. Just look at how it took until 1996s The Watermelon Woman for American cinema, indie or otherwise, to see its first film directed by a black Lesbian, in this case acclaimed director Cheryl Dunye.

With A Story And Cast This Good, No Wonder Jackie Brown Is So Thoroughly Entertaining

We all know how much Quentin Tarantino loves making movies that extensively pay homage to genres of cinema that proved highly influential to him while also putting his own spin on said genres, it's his own trademark as a filmmaker. While I've heard Jackie Brown frequently referred to as Tarantino doing a homage to blaxploitation cinema of the 1970's, I wouldn't quite classify it as occupying that specific region of filmmaking beyond the font used for the title and of course the casting of Pam Grier in the titular lead role. Like another 1990's movie I reviewed recently, Miller's Crossing, Jackie Brown actually skews closer to 1940's movies like The Big Sleep involving a lead character of questionable morals trying to keep their head above water among numerous intersecting storylines.

Nicolas Cage, John Travolta And John Woo Come Together To Create Unhinged Action Movie Fun In Face/Off

Water is wet. The sky is blue. Nicolas Cage is a whole heck of a lot of fun when doing go-for-broke performances. These are all universal truths of this world and the fact that Nicolas Cage imbues even his most peculiar performances with full-bodied commitment should be something more people should recognize instead of reducing this wonderful actor down to just a meme. You know who else is no stranger to eccentric performances? John Travolta. I'm nowhere near as convinced that Travolta is something special as an actor as I am about Nicolas Cage, but he's had his share of memorable oddball turns playing various man-animals.

Get Grooving To Those Thoughtful And Transfixing Boogie Nights

The porn industry is a ubiquitous presence in the media landscape, especially during the 1970's when the medium went through an era marked by financial prosperity that would later get it named The Golden Age of Porn. But how often do we think about the people behind these X-rated movies, the human beings who brought the smut to the big screen back in the day and your laptop screen in the modern-day world? For only his second feature-length movie ever, Paul Thomas Anderson decided to expand on both an idea and a name (Dirk Diggler) that originated in an earlier short film he helmed to create Boogie Nights, which may just be his peak as a filmmaker and God knows that's a high compliment given how many great movies Anderson has made.

Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg), on the surface, seems like a protagonist you've seen many times before, the scrappy kid everyone undervalues who dreams of doing something great with his life and ends up heading off to show business to prove he's something special. For Eddie's journey though, some key differences have been made from the typical depiction of this storyline. For one thing, Eddie's struggles at home stemming from an abusive mother are more realistically rendered, which makes Eddie's tearful proclamation to his mother (who repeatedly yells at her son that he's stupid and won't amount to anything) that he will make a name for himself all the more heartbreaking to watch. After that kind of experience, there's no going back to his old life and considering how troubled it was, that's very much a good thing.

Where exactly will Eddie make a name for himself though? Why, in the world of XXX cinema! Prolific director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), who has dreams of making an adult movie so captivating on a storytelling level that people watch it for more than just self-pleasure, has asked Eddie to come act in some of his movies and now Eddie decides to take up his offer. Eddie, now donning the name Dirk Diggler for the silver screen, is introduced to the various members of Jack Horner's gaggle of actors & technicians, including Horner's wife Maggie A.K.A. Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), Eddie's soon-to-be best bud Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly) and Rollergirl (Heather Graham).

Early on, we get introduced to the various members of Jack Horner's social circle at a big pool party and one can already see there are issues with how these various people interact with each other. Everyone is trying to score something from another person, whether it be drugs, a role or sex or some combination of all three. There is no concern for anyone beyond themselves and this mindset has been so ingrained into everyone's psyches that it's not even a malicious act at this point, it's just how they act. Even a young woman overdosing on cocaine isn't enough to get people to exert empathy, only the prospect of cleaning up this mess quickly and quietly is on the minds of the people who find this dying person. It's clear from the get-go that, underneath all the girls, glitz and glamor, is a self-absorbed atmosphere that can only lead to ruin.

Laying that atmosphere out in the open from the get-go doesn't make the heavily flawed characters a pain to watch though. On the contrary, Paul Thomas Anderson's screenplay hopscotches between a wide array of figures that Eddie meets as he enters the porn biz who are thoroughly engaging to watch. Reed Rothchild (who has been told he looks just like Han Solo don'tcha know) is a total hoot thanks to John C. Reilly's committed and frequently intentionally oblivious performance while Julianne Moore is totally transfixing as the quietly tragic Maggie. Her character is a phenomenal representation of the sense of tragedy that makes the characters of Boogie Nights thoroughly entertaining even in their most unsavory moments.

Each of the characters in Boogie Nights want to upend the odds and get themselves a better life. Whether it's Reed's desire to be a magician, Horner wanting to imbue real cinematic craft into his pornographic movies or especially Maggie's desire to be reunited with her son, these characters are all people who wish to exceed expectations and lead top-caliber lives. But their own self-destructive tendencies (namely drug addiction) keep getting in their own way. They've got the will to change their lives, but not the drive. Though it's got tons of humor to its name and a lively pace, the best moments in Boogie Nights are the quietly tragic ones where characters realize their ambitions can't fit into reality, most notably Scott J. (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) breaking down after his romantic advances on Eddie are rejected and a separate scene showing Rollergirl and Maggie bonding over their personal familiar woes while doing cocaine.

Nestling the combination of tragic pathos and well-realized characters underneath a feel-good partying exterior is a move Paul Thomas Anderson pulls off with grace as both a writer & a director. He's especially good with working with his incredibly well-casted actors, who make the ensemble cast of characters work like gangbusters. There really isn't a dud performance to be found here from leading man Mark Wahlberg, in the role that put him on the map as a leading man, being dynamite as Eddie to character actors Luis Guzman & Alfred Molina doing memorable work in supporting roles. It's Julianne Moore who walks away with handily the best performance here though as she portrays Maggie's internal pain in such subtly masterful ways that emotionally devastate you. A scene where she fights for custody of her son serves as ample demonstration of this as just a facial expression from Moore proves to be as powerful as her depiction of her character breaking down in tears immediately after the custody battle.

Similarly memorable from Boogie Nights is the soundtrack which is littered with memorable 1970's/1980's tunes. Movies heavily utilizing pop tracks from those two decades are a dime-a-dozen, but Boogie Nights make some great unique choices for which songs to use (Sister Christian is an especially good example of this) and the way they're utilized is also key to why the soundtrack works so well. For instance, I would have never ever imagined Fooled Around And Fell In Love being set to the type of scene Boogie Nights sets it against, but it's a brilliant and hilarious move, just one of many remarkably crafty moves this 1997 feature makes that help make it as entertaining as it is. Another one of those moves is ending the story on a melancholy note for the characters, with a few members of the cast making progress as people, but others (like Maggie, her final moment in the film showing her just staring into a mirror in resigned sadness is thoroughly haunting) still left stranded in their own unfulfilled ambitions. What a perfectly realistic somber note to end the story on. Frequently cafard character introspections have rarely been as compulsively riveting as they are in Boogie Nights.

Spawn Is A Terrifying Movie But Not In Any Of The Ways It Wants To Be Terrifying

Us comic book fans may have had to wait until the 21st century for proper live-action movie adaptations of The Avengers, Spider-Man, Hellboy, Wonder Woman and all kinds of other superheroes but a few comic book characters did manage to get their own theatrical American movies prior to Y2K coming around. Superman and Batman, of course, got incredibly famous movies while the likes of The Punisher, Captain America and Howard The Duck also got their own feature films. You know who else got one? Spawn, the Image Comics character who was reasonably popular in the 1990's but has since faded away into obscurity. This terrible movie he got in 1997 suggests that may not be a bad thing.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Be Disappointed By A Forgettable Sci-Fi Horror Film Like Alien: Resurrection

The Xenomorphs are back! And this time, they're trapped in a movie that harkens back to the 1960's sci-fi schlockfest's the original Alien was supposed to be an atmospheric and suspenseful counterbalance to. Now, there's nothing at all inherently wrong about the world of B-movie cinema, far from it! It's just interesting to me to see this franchise become the very yin it was supposed to be the yang to. More than a little bit of tragedy is added to that transformation considering Alien: Resurrection turns out to be the weakest Alien movie in the franchise yet.

Letting A Non-White Perspective Take A Prominent Role In Amistad Helps It Become As Powerful As It Is

Despite Steven Spielberg being one of the most prolific figures to ever grace the medium, he does have a few movies that seem to not be as noteworthy in the public eye. 1941 is one of course, while his mid-1980's drama that introduced the world to Christian Bale Empire Of The Sun also feels like it's slipped through the cracks and maybe it's just me, but his 2005 Best Picture nominee Munich also feels like it could be given that distinction. Another one if his films in that category is his 1997 feature Amistad, which I first heard about in the book The Men Who Would Be King (a book chronicling the rise and fall of Spielberg's movie studio DreamWorks) where it was looked back on as both an awards and financial disappointment in the history of the studio.

It's Time For A Charming Romantic-Comedy With Blast From The Past

When the nuclear apocalypse comes (and considering Trump's daily tantrums, that may come sooner rather than later), we shall gather around fires and tell tales of the past, before the world came crashing around all of us. It'll be like that scene in Reign Of Fire where Christian Bale and Gerard Butler retell the Star Wars movies to a new group of youngsters in order to spark their imaginations and keep the power of stories alive. Yarns shall be spun and one such tale that shall be passed onto the post-apocalyptic denizens of the future will be the legend of leading man Brendan Fraser, who, for some reason, got abandoned by Hollywood in the 2010's despite showing some very clear talent as a leading man.

The Fifth Element Review (Classic Write-Up)

The Fifth Element is a walking-talking contradiction of a movie when it comes to its story. Namely, it's a film stuffed to the gills with characters, concepts and mythology, all of it newly created (it's not based on a toy, comic book, TV show or previously existing source material). There's so much going on, yet, it all flows as seamlessly as a peaceful river. All of the various subplots co-exist in entertaining harmony, one of the many positive aspects of The Fifth Element that makes it such an exciting and memorable adventure.

Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery Review (Classic Write-Up)

You've Got The Touch...You've Got The Austin Pooooooowweeerrr

In an interview given a few months back, Daniel Craig noted that the primary reason elements like Biofeld, Q or fun gadgets had been seen in Bond films was that Austin Powers had parodied such tropes of the James Bond features in such a well-known manner that they couldn't use them, at least for the time. I find it interesting that Skyfall managed to incorporate some of Bond's most well-known aspects once again, suggesting that Austin Powers grasp on pop culture had faded enough for 007 to fight bad guys in elaborate lairs again.