They Shot the Piano Player (2024)
Spanish director Fernando Truaba is one of those [...]
Archive for February, 1985
Blood Simple. (1985)
Blood Simple is a brilliant example of pure filmmaking. For every inch of its running time it takes the shape of a film noir nightmare, the kind of film filled with scummy characters, dirty deeds, good people who find themselves doing the unthinkable and an ending that is built on screenwriting ingenuity. The film is famous for it’s […]
Fear City (1984)
Abel Ferrara’s Fear City is a movie with a lot of style and a serious lack of ambition. The pieces are here that could make up a great crime thriller but, in the end, it doesn’t really add up to much. What becomes apparent right away is that the movie has been inspired partially by […]
Turk 182! (1985)
Turk 182! is one of those man-against-the-establishment movies that could only possibly work if the man and those within the establishment were totally brain dead. It’s about an ordinary guy played by Timothy Hutton whose rage against the unfeeling and uncaring government of New York City leads him on crusade to embarrass the mayor by […]
Vision Quest (1985)
Safe to say that Rocky turned the sports movie into a cottage industry. Since that movie won Best Picture, you can’t go a month without seeing some reformatting of the formula. Most of these movies are junk because they miss the point by focusing on the sport and not the people. Rare exceptions are made, […]
Torchlight (1985)
I am fascinating by portraits of drug addicts, when they are done right. We see nice people, ordinary people falling down a spiral staircase of ruin and despair both in their personal health and in their personal lives. It’s all a slick, glossy surface until the reality of addiction settles in. And there is the […]
