Drama

Tracker – The Mercy Seat

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Tracker – The Mercy Seat
  • IMDb: link

Colter (Justin Hartley) runs into some trouble helping a friend (Diego Klattenhoff) search for a pair of missing snowboarders (Madison Lawlor and Lexi Simonsen) on top of a mountain. Although he finds the girls, Colter loses them by handing them off to a group he mistakes for helpful locals who are actual a fucked-up group of mountain folk (Sean Depner, Jedidiah Goodacre, and Ariana Guerra as a victim made part of the family) who turn them over to the head of their family (Sean Bridgers) and plan on torturing the girls for their pleasure. 

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Heat

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Heat
  • IMDb: link

In honor of the passing of Val Kilmer, this Flashback Friday takes us back to 1995’s tour-de-force crime drama Heat. Unquestionably Michael Mann‘s best film, Heat splits its focus between a crew of armed robbers led by Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and the cops out to stop them led by LAPD Lieutenant Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino). No film has played both sides so well, although if I have a complaint it’s that a more ambiguous ending that faded to black on the gunshot in the weeds on the edge of Los Angeles International Airport allowing the audience to determine the winner of the pair’s struggle would seem to be more fitting.

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The Seed of the Sacred Fig

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Seed of the Sacred Fig
  • IMDb: link

While I quite enjoyed the movie, I have a strong suspicion that a documentary of the story behind the making of The Seed of the Sacred Fig would far more fascinating. Shot in Iran by director Mohammad Rasoulof while being sentenced to prison, the film was smuggled out of the country with the director to follow just hours before he would have been forced to surrender to authorities. Cut together with Internet footage of the Iranian government’s harsh crackdown on protestors, the thriller takes us into the lives of a single Iranian family which dissolves in front of eyes due to fear, paranoia, and oppression.

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Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Chinatown
  • IMDb: link

I don’t know if 1974’s Chinatown is without doubt the best film for everyone involved, both in front and behind the camera, but one could certainly make the case. Director Roman Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne come together with a neo-noir staple which provided Jack Nicholson one of his most famous roles as private investigator J. J. Gittes who struggles to find the truth surrounding the death of chief engineer at the Department of Water and Power (Darrell Zwerling), who Gittes was hired to surveil by a woman (Diane Ladd) pretending to be his wife (Faye Dunaway), and uncover how that death plays into a larger conspiracy of the Los Angeles draught and a land scheme which allows 30s Los Angeles to become a major character in the film.

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Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown. Read More »

September 5

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: September 5
  • IMDb: link

At only 94 minutes, September 5 is a surprisingly short and concise look back at the events of the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics through the lens of the ABC Sports team who were on the ground and on the air when the incident occurred putting them at the forefront of the coverage. Director Tim Fehlbaum‘s film stays with our newsmen covering their actions and perspectives as events unfold in real time, fighting to stay on the air and keep the coverage, and not providing the audience any information not uncovered by the team.

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