Beverly Hills Cop: 1984 action comedy directed by Martin Brest
and starring Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Steven Berkoff, and
Lisa Eilbacher. Brash, young Detroit police
detective Axel Foley traces the murder of his childhood friend to Beverly
Hills, where he is forced to work in an unofficial capacity with two local cops
to solve the crime. Hijinks of all kinds
unfold: a robbery at a strip club, a
smuggling operation, kidnapping, undercover work, and many procedural violations.
It’s
good. Early Murphy is the best Murphy,
Ashton is a fantastic straight man as Sergeant Taggart, and Judge Reinhold
spends the entire movie looking pleasantly dazed as per usual. It’s funny, plenty of action and intrigue,
and it moves quickly. I realize I was
probably one of very few who hadn’t seen this movie yet, but just in case
you’ve also missed it: it’s worth seeing.
The Woman Who
Wasn’t There: 2012 documentary
directed by Angelo Guglielmo. Tania
Head’s 9/11 survival story was the stuff of legend: she was working for Merrill Lynch on the 78th
floor of the South Tower when Flight 175 hit it, and one of only 19 survivors
above the point of impact. Her husband
was killed in the North Tower. She was
rescued by Welles Crowther, a man credited for rescuing over a dozen people
before perishing in the South Tower collapse.
She became a head lobbyist for the World Trade Center Survivors’
Network, an organization she helped strengthen and gain public recognition. Except Tania Head’s entire moving story is a crock
of shit.
I was pretty skeptical at first – I
mean, Meredith Viera produced it, so . . . but it quickly grew on me. I would have preferred to hear her supposed
story in its entirety from the beginning, rather than learning new tidbits over
time. That’s really my only quibble with
it. It’s short but powerful. And the end isn’t all sunshine and light for
the people left in the wake of her bullshit, it doesn’t sugarcoat their
feelings. Not all of her former friends
were able to muster platitudes about forgiveness.
The Naked City: 1948 film noir directed by Jules Dassin and
starring Barry Fitzgerald, Don Taylor, Howard Duff, and Ted de Corsia. Veteran NYPD Homicide Detective Dan Muldoon
and his rookie associate Jimmy Halloran have just caught the case of an
ex-model drowned in her bathtub. And
that’s all I’m saying. It’s a noir with
just a touch of dark humor; it shows the drudgery and legwork of the police
without being boring, which I think is difficult to pull off. We see
New York City as it was in 1940s summer, and the everyday lives of the
policemen. The acting is all over the
place – Taylor and de Corsia were mostly fine, Fitzgerald as the elder
detective is delightful, and Duff really overdoes it. All in all, a great classic film; definitely
check it out if you like noir.
Incendiary: 2008 British drama directed by Sharon Maguire
and starring Michelle Williams, Ewan McGregor, and Matthew Macfadyen. Williams plays a woman known only as the
Young Mother, married to a bomb-disposal officer in an anti-terrorist unit, a
bored housewife wanting more sympathy than her emotionally distant husband can
give her. She starts a flirtation with a
neighbor, a reporter named Jasper. One
day while the husband and her four year-old son are off at a local football
match, she begins an affair in earnest, and while she’s having sex with Jasper
they witness the stadium being blown up.
Seriously. Her husband’s boss
Terrence tries to comfort her, and Jasper senses some devious doings on his
part and begins to investigate. Soon
they are both vying for her attention and trying to solve the case.
I worried that it was going to turn
into a meditation on grief and
guilt. But I warmed to it pretty quickly,
especially once it morphed into a semi-thriller – and then by the third act all
of the air had gone out of it. I’m sure
the end was supposed to be uplifting and redeeming, but by then I’d stopped
caring.
World War Z: 2013 action thriller directed by Marc Forster
and starring Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, and Fana Mokoena. The zombie apocalypse has arrived, and it’s
up to Gerry Lane, former United Nations investigator (really?) to get us out of
this terrible fix. When crazed zombies
attack Philadelphia he manages to get his family to safety by having them
airlifted to a Navy vessel, where he’s reluctantly pulled into service
again. He leads a team to South Korea,
and from there they go bopping all over the planet to find the source and cure
for the outbreak.
It’s
fine, I guess? I haven’t read the book
yet, and I’ve heard the movie doesn’t even come close. If you’re looking for an easy, mindless,
fast-paced action/horror movie then give it a try. Just don’t expect brilliance.
