Rick's Flicks Picks on AWN

What’s so great about this 1940s set film is you think you know where its going and don’t mind, but when it surprises you you’re delighted.

Lottie Wilkins (Josie Lawrence, WHO’S LINE IS IT ANYWAY?) is a flighty, but good-natured woman who is married to a penny-pinching banker named Mellersh (Alfred Molina, SPIDER-MAN 2). She sees an ad in the paper for an Italian villa to rent and convinces solemn Rose Arbuthnot (Miranda Richardson, SPIDER) to join her. Because the 30 pound each price tag is a bit too high for them, they advertise for two other women to join them. Answering the ad are Mrs. Fisher (Joan Plowright, AVALON), an elderly woman who is set in her ways and likes to drop the names of the many dead authors who were her friends, and Lady Caroline Dester (Polly Walker, EMMA), a wealthy heiress who wants to get away from the prying eyes and hands of the men in her life.

What makes this film so disappointing is that it was done by people with real talent. Director Mike Figgis has made brilliant films like LEAVING LAS VEGAS and TIMECODE. For COLD CREEK MANOR, he must have turned his brain off; it’s the only logical explanation.

Logic is something that this film doesn’t have. Cooper Tilson (Dennis Quaid, FREQUENCY) is a documentary filmmaker, who moves his family out of New York City after his son Jesse (Ryan Wilson, film debut) is hit by a car. Cooper’s wife Leah (Sharon Stone, CASINO) is some exec at some company who is offered a VP job by her boss if she sleeps with him. If you think I’m giving away too much info, this comes early on and goes nowhere. That’s a pretty solid statement about the whole film. In the process of getting to its preordained ending, the film goes nowhere, builds no tension, gives no thrills and hardly entertains.

If you’ve read any of my other reviews of Sidney Lumet’s films, you know that I’m a gushing fan. If you haven’t read them then you may be asking, “who’s Sidney Lumet?” Other than film freaks like me, he is little known by the general public, but the general public knows his films, which include 12 ANGRY MEN (the best film about the American judicial system), DOG DAY AFTERNOON (the best bank robbery movie) and NETWORK (the best movie about the TV news industry). He makes great films. You can also add to that list THE VERDICT and RUNNING ON EMPTY. Now lets get to SERPICO, one of the best films about a whistle blower I’ve ever seen.

First and foremost, Al Pacino as Frank Serpico is what makes this film so great. Serpico is a young cop who understands the changing ways of the 1970s and wants the police department to adjust as well. He dresses like a hippie and works in plain clothes. He makes connections and collars that uniformed cops could only dream of making. Serpico is a breath of fresh air in an institution that is stubbornly set in its ways, especially when it comes to blackmail and pay-offs. Serpico will have nothing to do with the dirty money and that makes his fellow cops nervous and suspicious. Serpico’s desire to do the right thing puts his life in danger and estranges him from his friends and family.

Say hello to my little friend! You may have never seen Brian DePalma’s SCARFACE, but you know that line. This is a film filled with classic lines and Al Pacino’s bravado performance drives them into your memory. Some disregard this film as a scene eating exercise for Pacino (THE GODFATHER), but what they don’t get is that the over-the-top behavior is the character of Tony Montana, who was raised on the gangster films of Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney.

Montana is a Cuban immigrant who dreams of attaining the American Dream in Miami. He likes to pretend he’s a political exile to cover up his criminal past. He’s violent and paranoid, which is a deadly combo. He’s especially paranoid about his little sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, THE ABYSS) and whom she dates. He’s smart about the drug business, but indulges himself too much. Excessive greed and a huge ego lead to his downfall as well.

The second film in director Hiroshi Inagaki’s SAMURAI trilogy brings us on the journey of Musashi Miyamoto (Toshiro Mifune, RASHOMON) as he studies to be a samurai. His love Otsu (Kaoru Tachigusa) has left her home in search of him, selling fans to survive. Otsu’s former fiancée and Musashi’s best friend Matahachi (Sachio Sakai) is now the drunken husband of Oko (Mitsuko Mito) who is running around with Toji Gion (Daisuke Kato, SEVEN SAMURAI). Oko’s daughter Akemi (Mariko Okada) too longs for Musashi. However, Musashi has fallen in love with the sword and fighting.

He challenges the leader of a samurai school named Seijuro Yoshioka (Akihiko Hirata, GODZILLA), who Oko is trying to set up with Akemi. In the meantime, top swordsman Kojiro Sasaki (Koji Tsuruta, GYANGU) comes into town. As well, courtesan Dayu Yoshino (Michiyo Kogure, TEA AND RICE) and old monk Nikkan (Kokuten Kodo, THRONE OF BLOOD) will play key roles in Musashi’s journey.

The idea of the film grabbed me from the first moment I read about it and the film grabbed me from the first moment I started watching it. Directed by Robert Altman (GOSFORD PARK, MCCABE & MRS. MILLER) and starring Bud Cort (HAROLD AND MAUDE), the film follows Brewster McCloud (Cort), who lives in a bomb shelter in the Houston Astrodome as he sets out to create a pair of wings so that he can fly. For Altman, this film was his follow-up to M*A*S*H, which was a huge success. This film is the kind of pet project that a filmmaker gets to make only because he’s the hot guy on the block.

Helping out Brewster is his de-winged guardian angel Louise (Sally Kellerman, M*A*S*H). In the process of getting material and information for building the wings, Brewster and Louise get caught up in a string of murders. One of the deaths is Abraham Wright (Stacy Keach, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER), Brewster’s former employer, a vile landlord who makes the landlord in Chaplin's silent classic THE KID seem understanding. Wright was also a brother of two other brothers who may be of interest to someone who wants to build a pair of wings. The victims are always found with bird crap on them. The evidence against Brewster seems undeniable. But like everything in this film, nothing is as it seems.

Writer Lawrence Kasdan made his directing debut with this neo-noir film, which brought back the femme fatale to the big screen. The set-up is pretty standard, but the pay-off is what makes the film so great.

In the first scene, we meet low-brow lawyer Ned Racine (William Hurt, THE ACCIDENTIAL TOURIST), who is a ladies man with stale lines that he even admits only work on women who haven’t been around too long. One night he meets Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner, ROMANCING THE STONE), who’s married and blows him off. They meet up again and soon enough are wrapped up in a sultry affair set to the humid summer temperature of southern Florida. Their affair heats up and talk begins about wanting Matty’s millionaire husband Edmund (Richard Crenna, FIRST BLOOD) dead.

In the opinion of many critics and film scholars Howard Hawks’ RED RIVER is one of, if not the best, Western ever made. It’s hard for me to say if it’s better than HIGH NOON, STAGE COACH, WILD BUNCH or THE OX-BOW INCIDENT, but it ranks up there with them.

Thomas Dunson (John Wayne, THE QUIET MAN) is a grizzled frontier man who leaves his wagon train and his woman to set up a ranch in Texas. After he sees the burning of the wagons in the far distance, he knows his love Fen (Coleen Gray, RIDING HIGH) is dead. Soon he encounters a boy, who survived the attack, named Matt Garth who has a cow. With Dunson’s bull and Matt’s cow, Dunson adopts the boy and starts their ranch. After 10 years, Dunson has built, by any means necessary, his ranch into the biggest in Texas.

The film is like a mirror opposite of DEAD POET’S SOCIETY. An unconventional teacher instills art and individualism in the students against the wishes of the school’s establishment. The differences are that MISS JEAN BRODIE takes place in a girl’s school and the film looks at the free-thinking teacher negatively.

In an Oscar winning performance, Maggie Smith (HARRY POTTER) plays Jean Brodie, a bohemian teacher whose personality brightens the room when she enters, but also singes the drapes as well. Each year, Brodie picks four girls to become her special “Brodie Girls,” which she tries to mold in an image that she feels fit. The students we meet are the dependable Sandy (Pamela Franklin, THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE), the beautiful Jenny (Diane Grayson, BLIND TERROR), the emotional Monica (Shirley Steedman, 1970’s JANE ERYE) and the stutter Mary Macgregor (Jane Carr, TV’s DEAR JOHN).

The idea of a Sin Eater is fascinating. The devil, in some twisted screw you to God, allows sinners outside the Catholic Church to rid their sins and enter heaven by having a Sin Eater eat the person’s sins.

In the beginning of the film, we meet a priest named Dominic (Francesco Carnelutti, EXCELLENT CADAVERS), who is the leader of an ancient sect of Catholicism, which searches for knowledge of all things, especially the supernatural. They fight ghosts and demons as well as look for Sin Eaters. That’s when William Eden (Benno Furmann, MY HOUSE IN UMBRIA), a Sin Eater, comes to visit. Alex Bernier (Heath Ledger, 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU) and Thomas Garrett (Mark Addy, THE FULL MONTY) are the last of the Order and set out to find what happened to Dominic and where the Sin Eater is located. Along for the ride is escaped asylum patient Mara Sinclair (Shannyn Sossamon, THE RULES OF ATTRACTION), who has had a crush on Alex for years. Pulling the strings over Alex and Thomas’ mission is the Vatican’s liaison Driscoll (Peter Weller, ROBOCOP).

Based on a true story, this is the film that put the term Turkish Prison into the national vocabulary. Billy Hayes (Brad Davis, CHARIOTS OF FIRE) and his girlfriend Susan (Irene Miracle, PUPPET MASTER) are on a trip in Turkey. Unknown to Susan, Billy has decided to smuggle hashish out of the country to sell in the States. He gets caught at the airport and imprisoned.

In jail, Billy becomes friends with kind Swede Erich (Norbert Weisser, POLLOCK), drugged out British intellectual Max (John Hurt, THE ELEPHANT MAN) and angry American Jimmy Booth (Randy Quaid, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW). Billy and his friends have to endure unthinkable torture physically, mentally and sexually. Hamidou (Paul L. Smith, DUNE) is the harsh head guard of the prison and finds enjoyment in beating the prisoners. He’ll even come on his day off to beat prisoners with his two young boys in tow. The last scene with him opens up a whole new psychological dimension to the character who seemed simply cruel at first. Also a key person in the prison is Rifki (Paolo Bonacelli, JOHNNY STECCHINO), a prisoner who serves as a snitch to the guards and a supplier of tea and drugs to the prisoners.

In the wake of recent lawsuits filed against fast food chains claiming that the restaurants made the defendants obese, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock set out to see what the effects of eating McDonalds food for a month for breakfast, lunch and dinner would be. The stipulations of the experiment were that he couldn’t eat anything that wasn’t on the McDonalds menu, had to at least eat everything on the menu once and if he was asked to super size a meal he had to say yes.

He started out the diet very healthy at 185 lbs. and ended up 210 lbs by the end of the month. He had added on nearly 10 lbs. in the first week. Even surprising the doctors in the film, his liver began to fail. One doctor described the affects as the same as an alcoholic on a binge. Maybe the title of the film should have been LEAVING LAS MCDONALDS. He also experiences emotional and sexual problems as well as the feelings of junky who only feels better if he gets his sugar and fat high.