Patrick Grant (pccpgrant)

I really had my aspirations set for this film. I could have cared less that it was written and directed by Michael Crichton ('Westworld', 'Jurrasic Park' 'ER', etc.). It didn't matter that Tom Selleck was in it, or even eye-candy like Cynthia Rhodes and Kirstie Alley. Not Stan Shaw, whom I liked in 'Tough Enough'. Not even G.W. Bailey, who was able to sneak away from the first 'Police Academy' movie for this (as it turned out, 'Academy' was the 6th highest grosser that year).
What was important to me was that my hero, Gene Simmons, was in it. This would be his first major role since 'KISS meets the Phantom of the Park'.
Can you see why I was hoping for a little more? As it turned out, it wasn't nearly as bad by that standard, but Lord, it wasn't good.
Selleck plays Jack Ramsey, a futuristic cop with acrophobia and a thing for electronic crime and criminals. He runs afoul of some gagetry that seem to have minds of their own and decidedly don't like some people enough to try and kill them. Some further investigating turns up a geek-minded criminal mastermind named Charles Luter (Simmons) who comes complete with a special gun with bullets that will literally hunt you down and little spider-robots that shoot acid.
Simmons was not overtly heavy-handed as Luther, but it's apparent no one ever gave him lessons on restraint. It's as though he still wore the Demon make-up underneath his suave suit and cropped hair. When pitted against Selleck, the good guy-bad guy conflict could not have been any more black and white than if it appeared in the daily comics page.
As a science-fiction fan, I was sorely disappointed, but as a Kiss fan, I was all right with the end product. I suppose it goes without saying this film really made me reassess what I thought I liked and what I really liked.

I'm still learning about a movie I was sucked into while loading the dishwasher early one morning.
To hear it was a Western remake of 'The Asphalt Jungle' does not suprise me. For a Western (and I don't cotton to Westerns in general), it kept my attention.
Alan Ladd plays Peter Van Hoek (does he have an Asthma-Hound Chihuahua?), a.k.a. 'the Dutchman', a well-educated miner framed for a crime and sent to the notorious prison at Yuma, Arizona, where he meets McBain (Ernest Borgnine), who wants to do his time and get back to life. They meet as part of a chain-gang at odds over a rather sadistic guard (know any other kind?). Once they are released McBain can't help but come to the aid of Anita (Borgnine's real-life wife Katy Jurado, best known for 'High Noon'), who is being hassled by the local rabble. Fate pulls McBain and the Dutchman back together for a measure of revenge against the local racist toughies and the robber baron who pays them (and, incidentally, sent the Dutchman up the river).
Ladd is his usual cool self, while Borgnine is refining his character of the 'heavy with a heart' (which got him an Oscar for the lead in 'Marty' three years earlier). For the big brawny type, you can see him almost melt around Jurado...and who can blame him. That's honest chemistry captured on film. A shame the marriage lasted only two years.
While it does indeed have a happier ending than 'Asphalt', there is a reason Hollywood endings aren't as memorable. Nonetheless, the lesson this film teaches seems to be 'Handshakes don't work out West. Get it in writing'.

Be warned forthwith there is very little in common between this epic biopic of William Wallace and the true history. The Battle of Stirling was fought on a bridge. There was no way Wallace could get close to the Princess of Wales. Wallace and Longshanks died years apart. That being said, this is a stirring portrayal of a man all but crushed under the rule of Edward I (known as 'the Hammer of the Scots') and was all the stronger for it. Gibson's portrayal of the legendary Scottish hero covers the gamut of emotions...subtle to shy, loving to angry, mischevious to murderous. He keeps his friends (Gleeson as Hammish and O'Hara as Stephen) close for the comic relief and his enemies (the great Patrick McGoohan as Edward) closer for the plot to continue. The battle scenes are among the most true-to-form for the graphic and gory violence of medieval warfare. Now if only they could have filmed the damn thing in Scotland, it would have been perfect.

How far down is rock bottom? If you're a banker, falsely accused (and convicted) of killing his wife and sentenced to the prison hellhole that is Shawshank Penitentiary for the rest of your life, you've pretty much reached it...so where else is there to go but up? In this adaptation of a story from Stephen King's 'Different Seasons', Tim Robbins, as Andy DuFresne, seems to be a little more wise to the ways of the prison world than he lets on and quickly latches up to the yard's go-to guy, 'Red' Redding (Morgan Freeman). Together they eek out an existence somewhere between the 7th and 8th Levels of Hell, making deals with Malebolge like the sadistic Capt. Hadley (Clancy Brown) and the hipocritic Bible-beater Warden Norton (Bob Gunton). I was particularly moved by the side-storyline of poor prison librarian Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore), who has been incarcerated for so long that his freedom, in the form of parole, becomes a Hell of a different kind that he cannot deal with. When it becomes apparent that Andy in indeed innocent and the prison officials cover it up with murder, his means of escape is among the most satisfying in movie history.