No.226 : The Yards (2000)

 

The Yards at the IMDb

You may have thought that E.U. rules would have demanded that this film be renamed ‘The Metres’ but fear not - the yards referred to are train yards, rather than units of measurement.

The film opens with a young looking Markie Mark heading home to Queens from a stint in prison. He was actually 29 when this was made and is the same age as me so it must just be a good vintage.

His family has a party for him and he is collared by his parole officer who needs him to get a job. He meets with his uncle James Caan who suggests a two year apprenticeship so that he can get a proper job. Not fancying this Markie hooks up with his friend Jaoquin Phoenix who works for Caan and seems to have loads of cash. He also has Markie’s old flame Charlize heron as a girlfriend.

Jaoquin explains that he is a fixer who wins contracts for Caan’s train fitting business. Of course this is done by way of bribes and smashing up his opposition’s rolling stock. He takes Markie along on a job that sees the yard manager refuse to play ball which results in Jaoquin stabbing him to death. Meanwhile altered by the alarm pressed by the yard manager a cop confronts Markie about his presence in the yard after dark. After a scuffle the cop is in a coma and sharp focus is drawn on the antics of Cann’s outfit and in the train tendering process in general.

Things deteriorate for Markie after he chickens out of finishing off the now conscious cop in his hospital bed, and gets fingered for the beating as well. Caan and the crew wash their hands of him and soon he is a marked man, especially after Jaoquin pins the murder on him too, after he learns that Charlize may like the Funky Bunch front man more than him.

With a large corruption investigation underway can Markie escape taking the blame and will the widespread corruption help to save his ass?

This was a decent offering but at the end it felt a bit slight and insubstantial. The story would have worked better as a mini series, as the sequence of events seemed hurried and unlikely. Markie basically goes for a job and on the first night is on the run for murder - maybe bed him in a bit and show us how things usually operate?

The settings and characters were familiar with the gritty realism of ‘Gone Baby Gone’ and ‘The Drop’ plain to see. It could have done with a Casey Affleck or similar in one of the leads as Markie and Jaoquin both looked like they were playing dress up. The larger cast was better despite James Caan’s poor moustache and Fay Dunaway’s poor fainting.

I’m not sure if this was a morality tale or just a slice of life but I wasn’t buying it. Markie seemed a bit of a scumbag and his resistance to a straight job left him being unsympathetic when circumstances went against him.

The big finale seemed a bit daft and I’m sure the police wouldn’t let a murder suspect out of their sight never mind let him weasel his way out of a air tight collar. I guess the message was that corruption goes to all levels, but it made for an unsatisfying conclusion that mirrored the rest of the film.

THE Tag Line - One Train You Can Miss 60%

No.222 : The Iceman (2012)

The Iceman at the IMDb

No, it’s not a spin off from ‘Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends’ instead it’s a bio-pic of mob hit man Richard Kuklinski, starring blog second favourite Michael, Mr Shannon.

The film opens with an aged and beardy Shannon being asked if he has any regrets. Before he can answer the film morphs back to 1964 with a younger Shannon on his first date with soon to be wife, Winona Ryder. She admires his tattoos and slow drawl, and even believes his story of being employed as a voice actor for Walt Disney. In fact he has a slightly seedier job copying porno films. He plays pool for cash in a bar and we get a quick taste of his temper when he slashes a man’s throat for giving him some lip.

Meanwhile at the porn lab he takes a slap himself when gang boss Ray Liotta wants to know why his order of porn isn’t ready yet. Ray sees a steely coolness about Shannon and offers him a job as a hit man. Shannon is keen to please and shows his loyalty, and psychopathic tendencies, by gunning down a random beggar. Things go well for a while and Shannon, Ryder and their two daughters move to the suburbs. His cover story is that he’s a currency trader, but it’s more whacks than Marks that he’s into.

Liotta has issues of his own when big boss Robert Davi wants him to kill his idiot henchman David Schwimmer who has stolen some drugs. This causes Liotta to lie low and this puts Shannon out of business. Despite being warned off, he decides to go freelance and hooks up with Captain America’s ‘Mr Whippy’ hit man who uses an ice cream van as cover.

The two soon pile up the bodies, keeping them frozen to disguise their crimes and the dates of death. After one loose talker too many, we are back at the start with Shannon reflecting on his worthless life and lack of regret.

I had high hopes for this film but it dropped off quickly and became a bit dull. It was confusing in places as the double crosses racked up and it was hard to care for a mass murderer whose only redeeming feature was supposedly his loyalty to his family. They touched briefly on his abusive childhood for his motivation but you need some excuse to pardon over 100 confirmed kills.

They did try to sugar coat the character of Richie, but reading the real life accounts it’s clear he was nothing but a murderous and wife beating psycho.

The cast was mostly good with thin material with the likes of James Franco, Chris Evans and Winona all underused. Chris Evans was hidden in a big wig and beard and his casting seemed largely pointless. Better than Franco though, who only got one short scene.

60s/70s New York was well realised with lots of classic cars and brown clothing on show. The film did one of my pets hates in that they had captions for dates of certain events at the start but they quickly disappeared, even when years had clearly passed in terms of fashion. Do it consistently or not at all!

Shannon was OK in the lead with his usual quiet menace. I didn’t really buy the character however and if he was seeking sympathy he got none from me. You could dress this up as a morality tale but ultimately it’s a bloke killing loads of people for money and getting caught. THE END.

THE Tag Line : Will Leave You Cold  - 56%

No.221 : The Sinner (TV) (2017) Series 1-3

The Sinner at the IMDb

A second trip into the Definitive world of TV now as we look at all three seasons of the American show ‘The Sinner’. Each season deals with a single case and lasts for 8 episodes. This may seem like overkill for a single investigation but the format does lend itself to an exhaustive approach to the crime and the motivations behind it. It won’t be for everyone, especially if you need a lot of action, but fans of the police procedural will lap it up.

Bill Pullman stars as Harry Ambrose a bearded detective working out of a precinct in Dorchester New York. It’s a well heeled community and you get the sense that murders are the exception rather than the norm. Harry has a basket full of issues, with a troubled marriage, that is soon dissolved, and a few kinks of his own including paying fat hookers to beat him up. These edges start to disappear in the later series which are pretty much straight up investigations, with Harry’s quirks largely set to one side.

The three seasons broadcast so far deal with individual crimes although mentions of the previous events do crop up in later investigations. The crimes all involve unlikely murderers and Harry’s, largely self appointed, task is to understand the motivations behind them and whether they can be explained or justified.

The three seasons are named after the main subject with the first being Cora. Cora is a young mother who one day at the beach stabs a man to death with a fruit knife. It looks like an open and shut case and she pleads guilty, but Harry knows he has 8 episodes to fill, and starts to dig deeper. As he slowly unravels details of the case we learn of a larger conspiracy and a horrific back-story that begins to explain her actions.

In the second season a young boy poisons his two carers, with tea made from a deadly root. Again it’s an open and shut case, but why did he do it and what has the mysterious cult, in which he was raised, got to do with it all?

In the last season to date, a young teacher survives a car crash in which his friend dies. An examination of the timeline shows that the friend could have been saved,. Why was he allowed to die and what about these other murders that are cropping up?

For me the first two seasons were great with the third only being so-so. I liked the fresh approach to detective work, although it beggared belief that Harry would be given free reign to pick apart an open and shut case whilst, presumably, loads of other murders were going unsolved, The first series was the most satisfying in terms of revelations and detective work. Harry has no special powers apart from asking the right questions and reading people. At first his kinky life is a major factor in his character but that’s rightly sidelined as the series progresses. I know every cop show needs an angle but I don’t need to see my leading man get his face sat on, on a regular basis.

The second series involving the cult was good too and I liked how the conspiracy was all over the town with various worthies getting drawn in. The creepy kid was excellent as was Carrie Coon, who you’ll know off Season 3 of ‘Fargo’. It was also good to see ‘Mr Dresden’ off those old Orange Cinema ads as ‘The Beacon’.

The third season was still enjoyable but it stretched things a bit far in terms of the indulgences allowed to Harry and by him to his suspect. When he agreed to be buried in a grave to win his suspect’s trust you could almost hear the ‘whoosh’ as the shark was jumped.

Bill Pullman is likeable in the lead, as the sharp but laid back detective. He is given too much latitude in his investigations to be believable, but you give it a pass as it’s enjoyable to see him dismantle an unbreakable case.

At the start I thought there was going to e a supernatural element to the series but in the end it is down to nothing more than peoples’ minds and their motivation, which is ultimately more satisfying than a lot of paranormal gubbins.

The series has been renewed for a fourth season and I’d certainly recommend that you get on board before that comes out. All series can be found on Netflix.

THE Tag Line : Sinner’s a Winner 74%

No.218 : The Gambler (1974)

The Gambler (1974)

With our revolutionary new policy of adding the year of release after the film’s title we can now do pair ups of same named films. These may be remakes & originals or just the same name, different film. The options are literally two.

First up in this double bill-athon is the original ‘The Gambler’ from 1974. Don’t fret, there’s no Kenny Rogers in sight - this is a gritty look at the world of betting and gangsters.

James Caan plays ‘Axel’ a literary professor who is an inveterate gambler. We see him at first in a back street joint losing $44k - and that was a lot of money in 1974 - over a quarter of a million in today’s bucks. It’s not clear at first why get gets so much credit but we soon learn he comes from a rich family who bail him out. He has a lovely girlfriend in Lauren Hutton and a sweet Mustang, but he still needs his gambling hit.

He manages to get his mother to give him the cash, who extracts it from James Woods' slimy banker, but he’s straight off to Vegas to gamble it up. Despite winning, he soon loses the lot and more owing to his habit of picking the losers in every basketball match.

With Lauren fed up and his family despairing, Caan has one last card to play - will he get out from under or is he in a death spiral, from which there is no escape?

That quick summary covers more or less all of the plot, in what is a pretty straightforward film. As soon as we meet Caan he’s in a hole, a hole that he manages to make progressively worse as the film goes on. It was a great lesson in observation with many classic gambling traits rote large. He explains that he needs the action, so even when he’s ahead, it’s never enough. He’s a brave man as a cavalcade of familiar mob leg breakers dog his every step including Paul Sorvino and Paulie off ‘Rocky’.

Caan was excellent as the tunnel visioned Axel, who couldn’t see beyond the next big score. The film did show the highs of being a gambler too, with a great sequence in Vegas seeing him ride his luck to the point he was hitting on 18 as he knew a ‘3’ would be the next card. It never lasts though!

The chaos he creates for his family and friends was well done with his mother a picture of resignation. There was some confusion about where he was with his debts and who he owed, but I guess that would be a deliberate ploy to show how mixed up Axel’s life was. There were loads of great character actors on show with Huggy Bear being a standout at the end as , you’ll never guess, a pimp.

I felt the film should have ended with the climatic basketball matched but it meandered another ten minutes just to show that the spiral would continue as greater thrills were sought. Some things are better implied, but at least we got Huggy shouting some jive.

Overall this was a great character piece that was well observed and acted and it may even make you think twice the next time you fancy £5 on ‘Lucky Lad‘ in the Chepstow 5.15.

THE Tag Line : Take a bet on this  78%

No.180 : The Mack (1973)

The Mack at the IMDb

The Urban Dictionary describes a ‘Mack’ as a ladies’ man or a pimp. In this film it’s definitely the latter with Goldie being our main man. The film opens with Goldie getting arrested after a botched robbery he attempts with Richard Pryor, and getting five years in the joint.

Time flies and soon he’s back on the streets with ambitions to takes back what’s his, as well as lots of other stuff that isn’t his. The film is decidedly un PC with every character a racist bigot and that’s just the decent ones. Goldie’s plan is to get some broads or ‘bitches’ as he puts it, and to put them to work on the streets. Rather than feel exploited the women flock to have Goldie as their man.

He soon has a harem of ten ladies of the night on his payroll, with each earning him $100 a night (in 1973 money!). This allows him to indulge in a funny montage where he gets the best pimp gear and a fly Cadillac.

Not all is good however, with the two cops who arrested Goldie at the start trying to muscle in on his action and ‘The Fat Man’, the local Mr Big, also trying to get him in line.

We see some halcyon days with a pimp’s baseball match and barbecue (really!) as well as the ‘Playa of the Year’ awards where Goldie comes out on top. Goldie is also able to get his Mom out of the ghetto and into a harbour side apartment, whilst also having a hot white girlfriend. Can he hold it all together or will the lifestyle choices he has made come back to haunt him?

This was an outrageously un PC film by today’s standards with being caught with a copy of the script no doubt being a hate crime. It was almost exactly like ‘I’m Gonna Git Ya Sucker’ but funnier despite that one being a spoof. The clothes were amazing with Goldie’s gold bowler hat and cape combo a thing of beauty.

Goldie was a terrible person, with his exploitation of women and murders only slightly worse than his dress sense. At times he was painted in almost Robin Hood terms, but when he’s running classes in robbery and brainwashing women in a Planetarium it’s hard to cheer him on. There is some payback and reflection when various members of his posse and family get hit, but it’s played in such a cartoon fashion that it’s hard to really care.

I did like all the white villains such as the cops who, although corrupt, were also seen in a bad light for arresting Goldie for the big shoot out at the start. He was no angel and five years seemed a bit light. The Fat Man was a terrible overlord and it was no surprise that he fell for the old blind accordion player trick.

Max Julien in the lead was cool, but I wasn’t convinced by his powers of threat or menace. He looked like a nice man stuck in a funny hat and given reams of terrible dialogue to read out.

The film is a good laugh and a historical oddity. It does nothing for race relations with the African American community portrayed as mostly savage and backstabbing. All the whites were horrible too, so at least there was balance. Overall, one to watch and enjoy but also to burn if you get a knock on the door from some woke activists.

THE Tag Line : I Wanna See Assholes & Elbows! 60%

No.178 : The Wackness (2008)

The Wackness at the IMDb

Although made in 2008 this film looks to capture those crazy days of 1994 when pagers and mix tapes were all the rage.

We follow our hero Luke through a hot New York summer as he deals with issues and has a romance with Judge Anderson, no less. The film has chapter cards showing each month in a graffiti tag style which was also used to vandalise the ‘Sony Picture Classics’ logo at the beginning, in what was a fun touch.

Luke kills the time before he heads for college by pedalling dope from an ice cream cart whilst staying out of the way of his parents who are constantly fighting and about to lose their fancy mid town apartment. Luke also engages in therapy with his slightly offbeat shrink played by an excellent Ben Kingsley. He is a bit off the wall but offers solid advice in exchange for packages of pot.

Luke is still a virgin - must be the only drug dealer who is! - and has no friends. He doesn’t always charge for his drugs but is still left out of the party invites and of the trips abroad. Things look up however when he meet’s Ben’s stepdaughter, the lovely Olivia Thirlby. She is a free spirit and agrees to start seeing Luke, an event that leads the pavement to light up Billie Jean style as he walks home.

The two enjoy an idyllic beach house weekend and despite Luke’s hair trigger the two get it on before Luke spoils it all by saying something stupid like ‘I love you’. Olivia has a different agenda and cuts him off. Meanwhile Ben and his wife Famke Janssen are splitting up and as a result he's taking up hard drugs and suicide attempts.

With all this disfunctionality on show, who will survive the summer and what will the fallout be? Can Luke embrace the dopeness (good) and forget about the wackness (bad)?

I really liked this film despite not being a fan of the drugs culture or of the hip-hop music that permeates throughout. The two leads are great and their long chats are good fun as are their experiments in bad behaviour.

The whole melancholy mood is well realised and I got the vibe of ‘The Royal Tenenbaums' of lives being on hold waiting for something to happen. New York looked great with the hot, claustrophobic elements of the city brought to the fore.

The ending was satisfying - hopeful but not Hollywood. Overall this was an enjoyable outing to a more innocent time when drug busts, mobile phones and Covid-19 were all the things of a madman’s dreams.

THE Tagline : Dopeness Achieved - 75%

No.95 : The Switch (2010)

The Switch at the IMDb

Poor old Jason Bateman - he does such good work in TV shows such as ‘Arrested Development’ and in movies like ‘Up in the Air’, ‘Extract’ and even ‘Identity Thief’ but sadly, every so often, he has to sign up to stuff like ‘The Switch’ to presumably pay the bills. The film isn’t terrible but it  is so unimaginative and forgettable that you’ll have cleared it from your mental cache as soon as the credits roll.

Bateman plays Wally Mars a likeable but slightly unusual New Yorker who has yet to meet the right woman. He’s no out and out weirdo but wears tank tops and is the choice of transient mentalists when walking the streets of the Big Apple. He is best friends with Jennifer Aniston, although there is no reason given why they are friends and not shagging - he’s not gay you see. They completely bypass the whole ‘When Harry Met Sally’ thing and have the relationship set at ‘platonic’ from the off.

We know he wants more from the relationship as Jennifer is so lovely, but apart from confiding in his boss, Jeff Goldblum, Jason does nothing to seal the deal. Jennifer however is worried that her biological clock is ticking and lines up a sperm donor in the shape of ‘Little Children’ and ‘Watchmen’s Patrick Wilson to supply the population paste.

She throws a tasteless insemination party where the donor and his wife along with a gaggle of friends show up to sell the man fat. Wilson does his duty into a cup but when Bateman finds the sample when he hits the toilet he decides that maybe his man paste is the product of choice. He forgets all in a drunken haze but we are given clues the next day when Goldblum recounts tales of a late night visits that suggests Wally has been generous with his muck.

We flash forward seven years and Aniston has decided to return to town following the birth and raising of her child in Montana. We know that Bateman is the likely daddy and when they meet up the boy’s introspective character certainly suggest he has child support payments in his future. Several unlikely scenarios serve to bring Bateman and the boy closer together but when Aniston reveals she’s started to date the alleged surrogate we have to wonder who is the daddy and who will end up with the frankly needy Jennifer.

This ‘Who’s the Daddy’ rom-com is OK but it is also undemanding and for the most part unfunny. The central relationship between the earnest and likeable Bateman and the flaky and unreliable Aniston is poorly formed and they have no chemistry whatsoever. That said it’s better than that between Wilson and Aniston which is totally devoid of any believability. The idea of a straight man having Jennifer as a best friend was feeble from the off and although they set him up as a tank top wearer it beggared belief that Bateman wouldn’t call her out early on for leading him on.

The first arc that leads up to the insemination was without laughs and not least because of Aniston’s friend, Juliette Lewis who can’t do comedy and who hasn’t had a decent role since ‘Strange Days’ - don’t come it, ‘Starsky & Hutch’ was rubbish!

‘Seven years later’ was a bit better due to the rapport between Bateman and the boy but the whole tacked on relationship with the surrogate seemed forced and unbelievable from the off. The three acts were clearly marked and when Aniston told Bateman she didn’t want to see him again an hour in you knew things were going to work out fine.

Overall there was nothing to offend or greatly dislike in ‘The Switch’ it just seemed a waste to produce something so formulaic and dull given the talent available.

THE Tag Line - More Fun With the Cup
57%

No.80 : The Brotherhood (1968)

The Brotherhood at the IMDb

Off to 1968 as Kirk Douglas tries to shoe horn is as many Mafia clichés as he can in 90 minutes - will he break the record? Fagagettaboutit!

We open as a plane begins its decent into Sicily with our focus on a nervous young man. He is rebuffed by taxi drivers at arrival when they hear his destination but one cabbie agrees to take him. He must have flown Ryanair as it takes ages for him to arrive at his destination. Meanwhile a moustachioed Kirk Douglas is also making a journey and taking his gun along for the ride.

The two meet at a ruined castle and quickly embrace - Kirk tells the guns wielding torpedoes to settle down as this is his brother. The two men have a good old chat but Kirk’s wife warns him that ‘they will send someone’ as his brother unpacks his own gun in his bedroom.

We then go into flashback mode to see how things ended up as they have.

This section of the film opens with the younger brother, Vince, getting married. He’s fresh out of the forces and asks Kirk if he can join the family firm. Kirk is made up about this but we can see that the never smooth running world of the Mafia is creaking at the edges as different factions at various tables spend the whole time glaring at each other.

Some sections of the mob are keen to modernise with a lucrative deal in electronics appealing to the new guard. Kirk is more old school and is cautious to stay in scams that he understands, which unsettles the other Dons.

Meanwhile a canary is executed and as always in these films everyone is wondering who is squealing to the Feds to save their own skin.

After some pretty complicated double crosses Kirk decides to make a stand and kills a suspected snitch. This sends him into exile to Sicily and we are quickly back where we started. With the two bothers reunited can they resolve their differences and satisfy the mob? Will ties to the Mafia supersede family loyalties?

For a film concerned with the mafia this was a dull affair with too much talking and not enough action. As the title implies ‘brotherhood’ and loyalty are closely examined but as with all mafia films they all come across as a bunch of nutters looking out for themselves. The plan here to corner the electronics market was hardly exciting, and this was borne out by Vince showing Kirk lots of accounts to demonstrate how lucrative it could be. Call me old fashioned, but I was longing for a bit of honest to goodness leg breaking instead.

The film was hung on the central relationship between the two brothers and it didn’t work for me. Kirk was the fiery, headstrong one while Vince was more thoughtful and measured. This may be to show they are chalk and cheese but I didn’t see any real passion and that followed through to the denouement where the big decision was made without a second thought.

The locations in New York and Sicily were great but the cast was chock full of dull old stereotypes and the script was plodding at best. Overall how they managed to wring such a dull non-event out of the subject matter was an achievement indeed!

THE Tag Line : You won’t see this, Right?   56%

No.77 : The Honeymooners (2005)

The Honeymooners at the IMDb

A film with a score below 3 on IMDb can’t have too much to recommend it, can it? Well some may, but it won’t be this total dog turd of an effort

There is no reason why this is even called ‘The Honeymooners’ - it bears no resemblance to the TV show of that name and the couple involved are married six years. Still maybe they are going for brand recognition and surely it’ll be a fun, knockabout comedy with winning characters? Nah.

Our hero Ralph, played by the total misnomer Cedric the Entertainer, is a loveable loser. He has dreams of being rich and when we meet him he’s planning to make a killing with his Y2K survival kit. He drives a bus and tells a pretty passenger of his dreams and she shares hers. Like Del Boy next year they’ll be millionaires. Predictably the next caption is ‘Six Years Later’ and we find the couple, now married, stuck in their same ruts.

They live cheek by jowl with Ed and Tixie and true to form the brother is as thick as pig shit while is wife is the brains of the outfit. Why the two women both work as waitresses despite being super sharp isn’t touched upon.

Anyway the one white guy in the cast, played by an embarrassed Eric Stoltz, is a yuppie asshole who for some reason does his business deals in a diner. He plans to buy an old woman’s duplex and turn it into apartments. The waitress wives overhear and offer to buy the house, keeping the area Stoltz free. Alas they don’t have the cash as Cedric has spunked their savings on a new scheme to buy a train car, meaning the rest of the film is a scramble so they can swindle the old bat out of her house rather than let big business take the spoils.

After a few padding scenes of them trying to raise a dollar, complete with an overbearing R&B soundtrack, they find a dog in a dumpster and of course it is a champion grey hound. They enlist a poor John Leguizamo to train it up and soon the race is on. Will the dog win the conveniently deposit sized purse of $20k or will one of the seeds planted earlier in the film spring up and award an unlikely conclusion?

This is a terrible mirth free affair. The main loveable loser is nothing of the sort with every advantage gained being at the expense of some poor schmuck who gets swindled. They are meant to come across as rascals but in the real world they’d be pulling 20 at Rykers.

The humour is unsophisticated to the extent of being insulting to morons - “I know every inch of the sewer system” immediately followed by him walking into a big pipe - hilarious, I trust you disagree. The two leads are equally bad but they can thank the script for that. Well their terrible delivery and total lack of empathy helped too.

The wives were your standard smart wife with an unfeasible fat/stupid husband, a combination seen only in the movies. The cast does have a few familiar faces dotted about but nothing can save the execrable plot that is almost devoid of any surprise apart from a few ‘hmmm bullshit!’ moments.

On the plus side New York looks fine and it is quite short at less than 90 minutes but that’s about it.

THE Tag Line - Divorce Yourself From This Crap!  17%