Movies

Marlowe is one of those ambitious movies that attempt to bring out the dark gritty atmosphere that tends to be palpable in novels. Here, a director named Paul Bogart attempts to do the same for Chandler's Philip Marlowe. I was interested in this because of the Bogey reference as Humphrey Bogart plays an excellent Marlowe in The Big Sleep. But it turns out that Paul of the same name is no relation to Humphrey and it shows that his original name was Bogoff!

Wife in a coma. Wife about to die. Negligent husband and father comes back into the picture. Two kids - a rebellious teenager and a 10 year old going through a phase. Teen informs father that wife was cheating on him.

A samurai flick that attempts to provide a realistic portrayal of life as a lowly member of the Samurai class in feudal Japan while retaining the action that the audience looks forward to in such movies. Twilight Samurai weaves action, intrigue, suspense and romance into an excellent tapestry which is both striking and moving at the same time. But it could have been a lot better if some more care had been taken with it. This is especially true of the soundtrack which is woeful thanks to artificial keyboard strings etc.

A Welsh director helming an Indonesian martial arts flick. If that isn't tell you that the product is going to be weird and off the beaten track, then please read on.

A (probably unacknowledged) remake of A Walk to Remember starring that fell whore Mandy Moore (no offence to Mandy, but I couldn't help but rhyme), A Millionaire's First Love is pretty dire. Why I bothered to start watching it or subsequently sit through its entirety, I will never know. But I do know that I cringed on occasions greater than one and less than 500.

Mel Gibson is an unnamed driver driving a getaway car full of money and a dying (and soon dead) accomplice being chased by the police very near the Mexican border. Rather than being caught on US soil, he intentionally crashes through a border fence into Mexico. The cops on the other side (who were also following along) while initially happy to hand over the two American nationals back, change their minds upon seeing the money. They decide to keep it for themselves and hush Gibson up by imprisoning him in 'El Pueblito', a notorious prison controlled by criminals.

A conspiracy thriller starring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway and Max von Sydow, Three Days of the Condor is a decent yarn for 1975. The performances are tight with special mention to von Sydow's sterling portrayal of the sinister gentleman assassin. Sydney Pollack's direction ensures that the movie works even with a weak premise. It is in many ways similar to Will Smith's Enemy of the State.