This is Tarantino's eighth directed film. It seems as if he's done more than that. This film has almost all of the stylings and quirks which you've come to expect from a Tarantino production. There are snarky one liners, sarcastic asides, wordplay, riffs on things that appear not to matter that much, black buddy/white buddy motifs, implied danger masquerading as excessive politeness and twisted sexuality. This film also impresses with the cinematography. The Hateful Eight was shot in Colorado and used widescreen Panavision. The effect is reminiscent of several old Westerns and classic seventies films. Tarantino loves film, and it shows. Even if you're not otherwise a Tarantino fan you might want to look at this movie simply for its visual feast. The colors are a treat. The film is broken up by title cards and even has a spot for an intermission. Legendary composer Ennio Morricone scored this film and allowed Tarantino to use previously unreleased tracks. So the film is also an auditory experience. The Hateful Eight features many actors who've worked with Tarantino before. This movie also finds Tarantino continuing his gleeful, irreverent and occasionally painful or offensive inspection of America's obsession with race and sex-particularly how those two baseline concepts intertwine. Thematically The Hateful Eight picks up after Django Unchained. It takes place in an undefined time period after the Civil War, probably the 1870s or early 1880s. But that's not really important. Although slavery has been outlawed and blacks are theoretically equal citizens, no one black or white, really believes that blacks have equality. The white conservatives of the time are openly hateful of the freed blacks while the liberals are just as prone to racist language and beliefs. Racial hostility suffuses the movie and is never far from the story. If you can't tolerate racial venom being expressed in fictional creations, this is not the film for you. Dialogue is very important in this film, occasionally more so than plot.
The Hateful Eight is Tarantino's tilted take on a locked room mystery. A number of people find themselves unexpectedly forced to share lodgings during a Wyoming snowstorm. Most of them don't know each other and those who do know each other don't appear to like each other very much. This group includes Joe Ruth (Kurt Russell) a bounty hunter known as The Hangman for his insistence for bringing in criminals alive so that they can face the noose. Ruth is a brutal if honest man. His idea of telling someone to shut up involves an elbow to the nose. His current bounty is Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) a foul mouthed murderer. He's taking her to the town of Red Rock. On the road Ruth runs into Major Marquis Warren (Samuel Jackson) a former US Army officer (there actually were a handful of black officers in the Civil War) and Civil War vet who now also makes a living as a bounty hunter. As Warren is introduced to the viewer sitting on a pile of corpses, it's obvious, as Warren later cheerfully confirms, that he prefers to transport his bounties dead. Less trouble and less backtalk. As Ruth actually knows Warren from back in the day he's willing to give the stranded Warren a ride to the next lodging. When Ruth runs across the stranded Chris Mannix (Walter Goggins) a former Confederate soldier and Night Rider/KKK terrorist, he's a little less affable (not that Ruth is all that friendly to Warren) but when Mannix points out that he's actually Red Rock's new sheriff, Ruth decides not to take the chance of leaving the new sheriff to freeze to death. These men and their driver arrive at Minnie's Haberdashery, a lodge offering food and shelter. But Minnie's not around. The current inhabitants of the lodge are Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) a taciturn cowboy who claims to be writing his life's story, Oswaldo Mowbray (Tim Roth), the loquacious English born Red Rock hangman, quiet former Confederate General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), and Bob (Demian Bichir), the man Minnie left in charge while she's off to visit her mother. All of these people, plus Ruth's driver O.B. (James Parks), must settle down for the night or as long as it takes the storm to pass.
As you might imagine the lodge's inhabitants very quickly notice things they don't like or trust about each other. A little thing like jellybeans on the floor can set suspicions aflame. Obviously a black Union soldier and two Confederates won't see eye to eye on very much. Tarantino effectively builds the tension in the lodge. I liked that the film did not (pun intended) whitewash the dedication to white supremacy which both animated the Confederate cause and flowed virtually unchecked through 19th century America. Nevertheless The Hateful Eight still has some deliberately anachronistic elements around race. The film also takes care to play with your perception of who the heroes are or even if there are any heroes. Ruth is presented initially as a good guy but has no problem putting hands or elbows or pistol butts on Daisy for any transgression, physical or not. Another character points out that women can kill you just as easily as men can but also die just as easily as men do. Not just content to dirty up the heroes a bit this movie also interrogates the techniques that black people use to avoid or survive confrontations with racist whites. Sadly, in the 19th century and today, it is often effective for a black person caught up in a confrontation to claim that powerful white people will be upset if anything should happen to him. Major Warren both upholds and subverts this trope. There are also shoutouts to previous Tarantino films, most uncomfortably Pulp Fiction's most disgusting scene. The film smartly avoids gore throughout most of its run time but lathers it on a bit too broadly near the end. This was a long film, almost three hours, but I didn't think it dragged much. I was a little irritated that the film explained some things I didn't think needed explaining and left some things a mystery which I thought were worth spelling out.Goggins really works the swagger while Jackson does the angry black man. Because Daisy is chained throughout most of the film and often threatened or beaten by Ruth for speaking, Leigh's acting is often quite subtle. Given that's she playing a crafty, racist but also somewhat stupid woman, this is a nice piece of work. It's never pointed out exactly who Daisy killed. If one were of a conspiratorial and/or feminist bent one might suggest that Daisy is being symbolically punished for violating traditional mores of femininity. You could argue that in this one regard Leigh's work here hearkens back to her otherwise dissimilar role as Tralala in the excellent film Last Exit to Brooklyn. Despite her name, Daisy's no lady. And this lack of pedestal protection might well explain her fierce racist reaction upon encountering Warren. Why the hell is she in chains while this black man walks free? Ultimately I found the explicit violence over the top, but it's a Tarantino film. Who could expect otherwise? This is an amoral film without too much depth. Stuff happens. People die. Not Tarantino's best or worst work, this is an extremely well made and entertaining film that revels in a Grand Guignol ending. Channing Tatum and Zoe Bell also have roles. If you do see this you should do so in the theater. You'd be cheating yourself by waiting for VOD/DVD. TRAILER
Ok. There are a couple of things which I should point out before this short little post. (1) I am not an R. Kelly fan. I don't like or listen to R. Kelly's music. I know at most just two songs of his. There is very little modern R&B that I listen to as on balance I find the genre in its current incarnation to be about as soulful as Pat Boone and Lawrence Welk eating spam and mayonnaise sandwiches while riverdancing to Muzak. (2) Although in some states, including my own, the age of consent is 16, I don't have much respect for any grown man (i.e. over 21) who is doing anything with someone who is under 18. I think such action is distasteful when it's not outright criminal. Apparently R. Kelly has a new release and like any other musician in his position he wants to drum up interest. For some reason he or his oh so skilled top notch management/marketing team thought that it would be worthwhile for him to appear on Huffington Post Live with feminist Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani to discuss this release and other things. The interviewer wanted to get into the accusations of sexual misconduct. R. Kelly didn't want to discuss those allegations. So this interview went about as well as you might expect. You can watch it here. Basically R. Kelly lost his cool, made an ill-fated attempt to compliment Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani and then left the premises in a huff. R. Kelly knows his history. And he's old enough to know how America works. He must have been deluded to think this interviewer would not have asked questions about the past accusations against him. Let me reiterate that I don't give a flying fig newton about R. Kelly, his music, his pocketbook or his well being. He's meaningless to me. What I do care about though, is the ease with which the American media (both white AND black) can so easily and consistently make a black man the face of a larger public issue- in this case pedophilia/teenage groupies- and the self-righteousness which some people bring to bear on anyone who doesn't accept faulty logical premises about what makes good art.
What do you do when your most impressive hero has finally gotten a little bit too old to be a believable butt kicker? Why if you're Stephen Hunter you bring in the next generation. Although they were introduced previously in a book I didn't read (I don't find it necessary to read this series in order), Soft Target finds USMC sniper Ray Cruz (despite the last name and half-Asian ancestry he is Bob Lee Swagger's son with all of the traditional Swagger skill at fast thinking and instinctive violence) and his half-sister news reporter Nikki Swagger caught up in a Black Friday terrorist attack on the Minneapolis Mall of America. Bad guys shoot Santa Claus and round up over a thousand hostages. Nikki is reporting on the incident. She also plays an important role in combating the attackers because after all, she has her Daddy's steel trap brain. Ray is caught inside the mall with his wife (or is it girlfriend, I can't recall and it is so not important) and her family. And Ray doesn't have any weapons with him. But Swaggers Die Hard (and yes this does read like a particularly bad ripoff of those movies) and Ray Cruz soon has a plan. He also has someone to help him, an Ebonics speaking black woman with a bad attitude. The bad guys are cartoonish Somalis who are more interested in rape, molestation and telling bad goat jokes than they are in the stated goal of avenging Osama Bin Laden. Their Imam is a conflicted and possibly gay man who tries to deny his tendencies by overindulging himself with Hustler magazine. But of course as you might expect in this sort of story the Somalis aren't even smart enough to pull this attack off by themselves. There's a shadowy mastermind. FBI Sniper Dave McElroy is watching the carnage take place. But he has no orders and no shot. As has seemingly become his practice now Hunter creates caricatures of liberals that read as if they are straight from Fox News. All the liberals in Soft Target are mushy she-men who dither and dally and get people killed. The primary and most offensive example of this is head of the Minnesota State police, Douglas Obobo, who is the son of a Black Kenyan Harvard graduate student and a White American Radcliffe Anthropology major. Obobo is a good looking charismatic Harvard Law Graduate who "despite the fact that he never broke a case, arrested a suspect, won a gunfight, led a raid, or testified in court" has risen inexorably to ever more lucrative and powerful jobs in law enforcement, helped along by an adoring media and his public affairs guru David Axelrod Renfro. There are rumors that Obobo will be the first black head of the FBI. Obobo (and I'm just guessing here that the name was chosen less for any Kenyan antecedents and more for the resemblance to the name Bozo) is a new kind of law enforcement official who believes in talking things out. He has an unshakable belief in his own abilities of persuasion and communication. He dislikes other cops much more than he does criminals. He has a smooth baritone. And he gets highly irritated whenever anyone questions him. Gee, I wonder who Hunter had in mind here.
Hunter's conservatives are all virile square jawed heroes who try to do the right thing but are always hemmed in by the liberal backstab. This motif is very common in conservative politics and goes back at least as far as WWI era Germany. I wouldn't mind this political axe grinding all that much if the writing was still up to snuff. But it's not. Here Hunter is FAR more interested in taking shots at President Obama and the left than in writing a good story. His gushing political bile sunk the entire narrative. For example, the FBI will take over control of a case once there is a international, terrorist or inter-state aspect to the crime. Feds are superior to local law enforcement. This didn't happen in this story solely so Hunter could continue to show how incompetent Obobo is. And there are plenty of other plot holes throughout the novel. Almost every white man in this book is scared s*itless by the idea that someone might call them a racist for opposing Obobo. The problem, from my perspective, is that in lampooning what he thinks of as mushy headed thinking on the left, Hunter only reveals worse mushy headed thinking on the right. Although there is definitely a time where violence is the answer, there are also times where it pays to find out what's going on first and/or avoid violence. Too many people at both extremes view the other side's preferred approach as not only wrong tactically but wrong morally. In real life I think the most effective leaders are those who understand that there is a time to talk and a time to kick butt. Both approaches are tools worth using. Because Hunter can't even bring himself to investigate and write honestly about Islamic terrorist motivations his villains are flat and lifeless. Even his heroes don't notice obvious bad guy mistakes until the plot needs them to do so. This was sophomoric lazy writing and not at all worthy of Hunter's earlier work. Perhaps that is why it was on sale for $3.99.
My Dad took my brother and me to see the first Star Wars movie all those years ago. That is a good memory. It was quite the event. Afterwards we had a great steak dinner at Flaming Embers. Good times. So I was interested to see the new Star Wars movie, even though I was a little leery of the director. Now I am unfamiliar with and don't really care about all of the expanded universe stuff that never made it to the canonical films. SO maybe some of those questions are answered there. But as far as I can tell at the end of the first trilogy, the good guys won. The Emperor and Darth Vader were defeated. The Republic was restored. Wasn't that the case? Apparently if that happened it wasn't for long. Because in The Force Awakens, the Empire or at least an Empire inspired bunch of counterrevolutionaries, has been reconstituted as The First Order. We know that these are the bad guys because they have storm troopers and prefer a Nazi inspired sartorial color scheme of red, black and white. Some of the crowd scenes also appear lifted from Pink Floyd's The Wall. The bad guys and bad girls all appear quite dashing if you're into that sort of thing. And what do these folk want to do? They want to do the same thing the bad guys and girls always want to do. Take over the world! Or in this case the Universe. Again, maybe this was all explained elsewhere but for me anyway a tiny little bit of exposition would have been helpful. The First Order has a tremendous number of soldiers and informers. They're armed to the teeth with the best military equipment. Where did they come from? How did they get so powerful? Are they all disgruntled ex-Empire soldiers who were dismissed from their positions? They are opposed by the Republic and The Resistance. At this point shouldn't The Republic and The Resistance be the same thing? But I guess none of that is really that important in the big scheme of things.
People I respect have threatened bloody murder should I reveal any spoilers. Hmm. Well that's actually pretty easy to do and easy not to do. This film is just a remake/reboot of the 1977 movie. If you've seen that film or are just familiar with it via cultural osmosis The Force Awakens not only won't have any surprises, it will also have damn near the exact same storyline and conflicts. To wit:
A white robed person grows up on a desert planet living hand to mouth.
A droid has really important information that is critical to both sides of the conflict.
The aforementioned droid fortuitously winds up with the impoverished white robed person.
The bad guys include an officious general and a weird fellow in a black suit with Force abilities. They don't care for each other all that much.
There's a weapon which can destroy planets.
There are sinister junkmen/traders who will sell out the good guys for profit.
There's a chubby guy in an X-Wing fighter who gets to say "I'm hit!" before his disintegration.
An outsider is tricked/manipulated/guilt tripped into helping the good guys because deep down inside he's a good guy.
Princess Leia gives off her trademarked non-nonsense aura.
A wise mentor dies(or does he) at the hands of the villain in black
And so on. The only real differences are that the hero in The Force Awakens is not a man but a woman. Unfortunately this woman is a true Mary Sue. There is nothing that Rey (Daisy Ridley) can not do in the movie, raising the uncomfortable question of why she needed any of the other actors. This is not the fault of the actress. I think that she did well with the role. This is entirely the fault of the writer and director. In order to be the hero you need to have something to overcome-internally and externally. Rey is shown as hypercompetent at EVERYTHING. She has no flaws or weaknesses. So she's boring. There's no opportunity for growth or conflict. There was much media and online attention paid to the fact that Finn (John Boyega-last seen by me in Attack the Block) was black and presumably the hero or at least one of the heroes. That was pretty obviously bait and switch for some or perhaps trolling of others.. While Finn's not quite comic relief his role does come perilously close to that at times. He's more or less incompetent and has to be saved by many of the other characters. And you could argue that he plays the Sleeping Beauty role. All of this would have been tolerable if Finn was actually good at anything. But he's not. He's earnest, and that's about it. Perhaps his role will be expanded in the sequels. But much like Prince albums or Spike Lee movies I think I will wait to see what other people say of the sequel before I venture to spend my money on it.
If you were looking for a film with a black male hero, this wasn't the movie you were looking for. This is Rey's story all the way. Again, I don't mind that all that much, but I can't help but think that this sort of thing was better done in Big Trouble in Little China. The white hero (Kurt Russell) saves the day but mostly by accident. His Chinese friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) is shown throughout the film as just as competent, if not more so. It's an alliance of equals. This isn't the case in The Force Awakens. Rey doesn't need Finn and lets him know that just about every chance she can. And she's right. Finn brought very little to the story. He's a renegade sanitation engineer. I didn't think it was necessary to almost make Finn a butt monkey in order to raise up Rey. Although the female character who screams and faints anytime anything happens is a useless stereotype better left to some late fifties Hammer films, it's also a useless stereotype when a female character is better at everything than her male counterparts. Anyway, that aside this film had the normal special effects, swelling music and sound, duels and familial reveals that you've come to expect from the Star Wars franchise. But it just didn't reach me on the mythic level which the first film did. It's very well made with some enjoyable moments. It was good but by no means great. But I've just moved on in my life. Bottom line is that if you were too young to see the original Star Wars this will do nicely. But for me it felt like a pale imitation. It also bothered me a bit that every time a bad guy makes a Death Star, some plucky good guy blows it up. It would seem that after this has happened a few times, the bad guys would try to think outside the box and do something a little different. Don't they teach that in "Smashing your Enemies 301: Do the Unexpected" at Evil Overlord Academy? Adam Driveris Kylo Ren, Darth Vader 2.0. Harrison Ford, Mark Hamil and Carrie Fisher all reprise their original roles. Oscar Issac is Poe Dameron, the Resistance's most skilled pilot.Gwendolyn Christie is Captain Phasma, a First Order devotee. Lupita Nyong'o is Maz Kanata, a thousand year old pirate/smuggler with information about the missing Jedi. TRAILER
This film is superficially interesting on initial view but the deeper you get into it the less it makes sense. Cox relies on some warmed over racist tropes (the black characters are only there to help the white characters find themselves ; the sole black female character is a loud brassy obese woman with a substance abuse problem) and relatively flat motivations for some of the other characters. Although the idea behind the movie (You can't go home again) is a old one I was hoping that Cox would be able to put some oomph into her take on this story. That turned out not to be the case. Part of the problem was that the story tried to reach for American Beauty levels of subtext and *important* storytelling while remaining wed to American Pie levels of crassness and silliness. So everything is uneven. The hero's motivation is so weakly defined that I never felt any sympathy or empathy for him. He's an incredibly dull man. And if a male director had crafted a role for Kate Walsh where 90% of her character's scenes involved pleasuring herself while semi-topless in front of her brother-in-law, I imagine that some people would start screaming sexism. There are some directors who can very easily make bittersweet comedy/dramas or "dramedies". Cox isn't one of them yet. Ted Morgan (Seann William Scott) is a man in his late thirties/early forties who feels (not strongly because he doesn't seem to have strong feelings about anything) that life has passed him by. He doesn't have any career path that beyond a dead end lower management job at a pet supply store. His wife (Elisha Cuthbert) cheats on him with her guitar instructor. In the ensuing divorce she accuses Ted of just stumbling through life without any purpose or excitement. She gets no passion from Ted. And apparently that is why she decided to hitch a ride on another man's train. How Ted's personality failings morally justify her adultery isn't clear but her criticism clearly cuts Ted to the bone. He's left reeling after being dumped. He feels worthless and inept.
Looking back on life Ted thinks that everything started to go downhill after his father's (Clancy Brown) death when Ted was in grade school. That was when Ted attracted the negative attention of two bullies, one of whom was a teacher. Ted thinks his life is pointless. He decides to kill himself. But he doesn't want to do that before he returns to his hometown to settle the score with the bullies and say goodbye (without announcing his suicidal intent) to his stereotypically blustering clueless macho chief of police older brother, Lucky (Garret Dillahunt), Lucky's wife Kathleen (Kate Walsh), his lesbian mother (Connie Stevens) and her Elvis impersonator partner (Dianne Ladd). But upon Ted's arrival he discovers that his nephew Zeke (Kyle Gallner) needs some help accepting who he is. This is shown, like most other things in this film, in a rather hamfisted manner. And the people who gleefully bullied Ted back in the day, most comically the earnest Rowley (Rob Riggle), are now totally different people who deeply regret their previous actions. Some of them don't have great lives themselves. A former grade school crush, Vickie (Mackenzie Marsh), is very happy to see him while his former teacher's granddaughter, Greta (Olivia Thirlby) has her own hidden reasons for tagging along to document Ted's last days. So Ted has to make a decision as to whether this suicide thing is still for him. In more experienced hands this could have been a more interesting and perceptive film. Unfortunately Just Before I Go always seeks the cheap laughs, while ineptly attempting to shoehorn in "important" messages about bullying, sexuality, acceptance and whatnot. The film was trying too hard to be something Wes Anderson would have done. You can safely skip this movie, unless you are eagerly anticipating seeing Kate Walsh almost topless. There aren't many surprises or new takes on old tropes. Thirlby did a good job with what she had. She just didn't have a whole lot with which to work. This film is something that, absent the generalized vulgarity, would have been a good fit for a 70s era ABC After School Special. TRAILER Ant-Man directed by Peyton Reed
This is a movie whose titular hero was never someone whose story interested me all that much. I mean, really your great superpower is that you can shrink yourself to the size of an ant and control ants? Whoop-de-doo! And who pray tell is your great enemy, against whom you must always be on guard? Borax Man? The Big Boot? The mysterious enemy known as The Broom? No I wasn't expecting very much from this film. But I was pleasantly surprised. Sure the story was something that's been done a million times before in various fairy tales and classic literature. A young impoverished man must win the trust of the king (and the hand of the princess) by performing great heroics and defending the kingdom against the renegade evil prince. But old stories stick around because they work. And yet because I wasn't as familiar with the specifics of the Ant-Man storyline as I was with the details of other Marvel heroes, it still had a few places where either the events or the special effects impressed. This is overall a fun movie that doesn't take itself too seriously. And that helps the viewer to enjoy it a lot. It drags ever so slightly in the middle but brings the bacon home at the end. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) is a scientist (and the original Ant-Man) who has perfected shrinking technology. However, much like Einstein, he's quite troubled by the military application of his advances in physics. He resigns from S.H.I.E.L.D. and is later forced out of his own company by his resentful daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) and his former protege Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) who may have a thing for Hope but definitely wants to prove to Hank that he's just as good as Hank at science. Cross is getting closer every day to perfecting Hank's old technology. And unlike Hank he has no problems with military applications. He's not even particular about to which nation or terrorist organization he sells his technology. Hope doesn't exactly like Cross but she thinks her father unfairly dismisses her abilities on account of her sex. And she also has unprocessed feelings over her mother's long ago death, something that her father won't talk about. Hank and Hope snipe at each other throughout the movie. Hope is no shrinking violet. She's back on her father's side..maybe. The father and daughter become angrier with one another when Hank, getting more and more worried about Cross' scientific progress and amoral worldview, decides to manipulate Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), an electrical engineer/activist/burglar, into working with him. Hope sees this as patriarchal betrayal of her. She has a need to prove to Daddy that she's just as capable as any man and certainly more so than Scott. Scott is just trying to stay on course to do the right thing by his ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer) and daughter. But it's difficult since no one is eager to hire an ex-con. No money means he can't provide child support. No child support means no visitation. And Maggie's new husband Paxton (Bobby Cannavale), while not entirely unsympathetic to Scott's fatherly prerogatives, would nevertheless prefer that Scott not show up and mess up his good thing with Maggie. Paxton is a cop so he's always giving Scott a little sideways look. The special effects are impressive and thoughtful. Scott's burglary crew (Michael Pena, T.I., David Dastmalchian) provides a lot of the film's humor with one-liners, deadpan reactions and clothing styles. Anthony Mackie has a quick cameo as The Falcon. As mentioned there are predictable story elements but overall this film was a fun ride. You should see it. It's not a grim or violent movie. It won't change your life or anything, but it satisfied. The good guys are good and the bad guys are bad. What more do you need? I enjoyed this movie. TRAILER The Wannabe directed by Nick Sandow
This movie is based on the same true life story which inspired the film, Rob The Mob, previously reviewed here. If I had known that ahead of time I might not have sat down to watch the movie. It is interesting how some small time criminals manage to become larger than life Robin Hood/Bonnie and Clyde types while others live and die in utter obscurity. The husband and wife who were at the heart of this movie now have at least two different films detailing their exploits. I'm not sure they deserved one. This film has a slightly higher end cast than Rob The Mob (recognize all the names from The Sopranos, The Wire and Boardwalk Empire) but I don't think it fully reached the cast's potential. The primary difference in how the two films treat their subjects is that in The Wannabe the duo, Thomas especially (Vincent Piazza) is portrayed not as any sort of tragic heroic dyad but as two low class deluded losers. Thomas lives up to the movie's title. He's someone who's on the periphery of the fringe of the outside of organized crime. Thomas tries to dress and talk like a gangster in order to convince people who don't know him that he's somehow connected. In truth he only knows a few mobsters about as well as the company CEO knows the first floor security guard. When Thomas is released from prison after a sentence for robbing video stores, he attempts to ingratiate himself with real gangsters by claiming mob bona fides for keeping his mouth shut about crimes no one ordered him to commit. Thomas tries to sound like a tough guy by quoting mob movies. Thomas' fake persona and claims of Mafia affiliation annoy authentic local gangsters, including the physically imposing Mickey (Domenick Lombardozzi), the quiet Sicilian neighborhood boss Richie (Vincenzo Amato) and the abrasive Queens neighborhood watchman (Mike Starr). In what is obvious foreboding each of these men tell Thomas at different times and in different ways: "You're not with us.".
Having fantasies of meeting and saving indicted Gambino boss and man-crush John Gotti, Thomas hangs around Gotti's Queens neighborhood where he meets, befriends and beds (not necessarily in that order) Rose (Patricia Arquette). Rose falls hard for Thomas and will later marry him. But as Rose's relatives point out, Rose, who is a junkie, is not exactly the best judge of character. Thomas' brother Alphonse (Michael Imperioli) tries to keep Thomas grounded in reality but you can tell that he's tired of this fight. When a harebrained scheme to use fellow courtroom observer The Twin (Doug E. Doug) to bribe a Gotti trial juror falls apart, Thomas can't stand the difference between reality and his fantasy any more. Like Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy, Thomas takes drastic steps to get people to recognize that yes, he really is somebody. These steps include robbing various Mafia social clubs and trying to murder Curtis Sliwa (Daniel Sauli), who has been relentless in his criticism of the Mafia in general and the Gottis in particular. David Zayas has a small role as a television reporter who torments Thomas in his dreams. Martin Scorsese was an executive producer for this film but it's not something which really bears his mark in any real way I could see-with the possible exception of the ending. There are a lot of scenes showing the couple enjoying drugs and the material goods they bought with their robbery proceeds. These get kind of repetitive. The film itself was shot in a murky style. But perhaps that was a deliberate choice to portray 90s era NYC. This is not, despite the subject matter, a shoot em up gangster story. It's more about two sad characters and how they lie to themselves. It does have a certain panache to it but I think you'd have to be in a certain mood to enjoy this story. Rose's nervous energy plays nicely against Thomas' self-pity. Rose, despite her substance abuse issues, seems to be better grounded than Thomas. TRAILER
Another day, another bad story out of Detroit concerning payment of bills. We've discussed this before. Not much has changed. There is still a big mess. It's a perfect storm of massive unemployment and underemployment, poverty, bad consumer decision making, poor record keeping and accounting by the Water Department and malicious gamesmanship by landlords and speculators. All of this has meant that there are some people who simply won't pay their water bills because they have had the accurate perception that they can get away with not doing so mixed with a population of people who simply don't have the resources to regularly pay their water bills. Poverty is real and limits people's ability to enjoy life. Perhaps some of the people in this latest story should not be shamed but rather all of us should be ashamed for having built a society in which large numbers of people have no opportunity to get ahead. It doesn't matter how much moral opprobrium you vent at someone for their life choices. If they don't have the money, they don't have the money. But public utility bills must be paid. I have little sympathy for someone who makes sure that their cable bill is paid but the water bill isn't. When someone does that they're telling you loud and clear what is most important to them. And it's not the water bill. If you use a service you should pay for it. Without everyone agreeing to that basic deal, society doesn't work. Things fall apart. People at the higher end of the income and wealth spectrum start to resent paying for those they see as deadbeats and freeloaders and become more receptive to the idea of starving the public sector of funds (except for military and police and fire). And people at the lower end of the income and wealth spectrum become more receptive to the idea that virtually every "need" should be provided for by the government free of charge. Throw in some racial resentments around gentrification and the idea that the Water Department has devious reasons for shutoffs and demanding payment and you get this situation. How do you survive without running water for more than two years? First, get a trash can. Put it under the roof to collect water to flush the toilet. Then, get a bucket and remember what your grandparents taught you in the early 1950s, before indoor plumbing reached all of rural America. “You use your brain. You scramble. You survive because you’re used to dealing with nothing,” said Fayette Coleman, 66, who grew up fetching water from wells in Belleville. She hasn’t had running water in her Brightmoor house since May 2013. The crumbling home is one of at least 4,000 in Detroit — and perhaps many more — whose water was never turned back on after massive shutoffs attracted international attention last year.
The outcry faded, but the situation hasn’t. Within a block of Coleman’s house on Fielding near Lyndon, at least three neighbors have endured shutoffs, including one who spent months walking up the street, twice a day, to fill buckets at a friend’s before service resumed in mid-November. Citywide, a third of all residential accounts in Detroit— 68,000 of 200,000 — are at least 60 days past due, city records show. The water issue is coming to light as a special panel studying water affordability is expected to present its plan to the Detroit City Council in January. The group expects to consider recommendations — including lower prices for low-income residents — when it meets for the last time Tuesday. Help is available, said Gary Brown, director of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. Some 39,000 residents are on payment plans, and the city has nearly $1 million available in payment assistance. “If you come in and say you are having an issue, we can find ways to help people,” Brown said. “But you have to come in.” Coleman gets by using bottled water for drinking, much of which she gets from charity. She heats water for sponge baths and flushes the toilet only after bowel movements. Otherwise, she does without.
I have always enjoyed Richard Thompson's music from his initial days as guitarist with folk/rock group Fairpoint Convention to what I think of as his most critical musical period with his then wife Linda and his later peripatetic solo career. Thompson remains one of the best living unheralded songwriter/guitarists which I why I mentioned him before here. Anyway I ran across a video of Thompson performing his song 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. Like much of Thompson's work this song combines Scottish/English folk music with American blues and country for a sound that's unmistakably all his own. I think that this piece is one that people will still be singing fifty or sixty years from now. It's a sad song but many of the best ones are. Young love, death and transcendence, this composition hits all the emotional high and low points. I like music that tells a story. It seems as if fewer songs can do that these days. Thompson's songwriting often manages to be somber and optimistic at the same time which is quite a neat trick. Anyway if you have a chance to see Thompson you should take it. He's quite the musician. This song is only a very small example of his capacities. If Trump gets elected perhaps he will force out the British Thompson from his residence in the United States. After all Thompson is a Muslim. So if we believe Trump and his mouth breather supporters, how can we really know what nefarious plans this guitarist has in mind?
