The Panic in Needle Park 1971
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Director: Jerry Schatzberg
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Cast: Al Pacino, Kitty Winn
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Why? A classic
· Seen: Once before. Now 28 September 2025
Bobby (Pacino) and Helen (Winn) are
drug addicts, and in love. She’s an innocent from Indiana, he’s been in the
street hustling since he was nine.
It can’t go well and it doesn’t. It’s
grim but it’s also boring. It’s not as good as I remember it.
It’s Pacino’s first big role.
2 ½ * of 5
Companion 2025
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Director: Drew Hancock
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Cast: Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid,
Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, Harvey Guilléne, Rupert Friend, Jaboukie Young-White
·
Why? Sci fi AI
· Seen: 27 September 2025
Iris (Thatcher) and Jack (Quaid) are
spending the weekend with his rich friends in a remote mansion. Iris is uneasy
because she feels out of place.
Which she is because she’s an AI, a
robot. Only she doesn’t know it and the others do.
What an unexpected little gem of an AI film.
4 * of 5
The Life Before Her Eyes 2007
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Director: Vadim Perelman
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Cast: Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood,
Eva Amurri, Oscar Isaac, Brett Cullen, Gabrielle Brennan
·
Why? Possible interesting
· Seen: 25 September 2025
Diana (Ward and Thurman) survive a high school
massacre. Years later she has a husband, a little girl and flashbacks to the
massacre. She sees the victims everywhere.
It’s very low key, so low key that it’s hard to
engage in the characters. Thurman is good though, and it pulls together
strongly, if enigmatically.
Naked 1993
·
Director: Mike Leigh
·
Cast: David Thewliss, Leslie Sharp, Katrin
Cartlidge, Greg Cruttwell, Claire Skinner, Ewan Bremner
·
Why? The cast. Mike Leigh
· Seen: Once before. Now 24 September 2025
Considered by many to be Mike Leigh’s
masterpiece and David Thewliss’s best role.
Not by me. It’s too grim. Johnny (Thewliss)
is a philosophy spouting drifter, cruel, violent, abusive. He's a loser,
everyone is a loser. There’s probably a point to it all but it’s too rambling
and talky for me. Leigh’s other films are so much sharper.
Great cast though.
2 ½ * of 5
Primary Colors 1998
Who wants to see a film about an American election? Not me,
but Emma Thompson and Adrian Lester are in it and I remember it being OK.
Henry (Lester) gets roped into being campaign manager for
presidential candidate Jack (Travolta) because his grandfather was a famous
civil rights leader and Jack wants the black vote. Thompson plays Jack’s wife
who struggles to keep the obnoxious womanizing Jack on track.
It’s supposedly a satire on Bill and Hilary Clinton.
An odd film but, as we know, reality is odder still and we know how things went for the Clintons. The film is fiction, of course, interesting enough with a strong cast, but it’s still about an American election and it’s kind of boring.
2 ½ * of 5
Greenland 2020
Comet fragments are heading straight for Earth but nobody
takes it seriously even though life on the planet is threatened with
extinction. The story focuses on a white couple with a son who are chosen for
evacuation for some reason. They take off, get separated, forget the kid’s
medicine.
It doesn’t make any sense but it’s a little bit exciting.
2 ½ * of 5
Stowaway 2021
Marina (Collette), Zoe (Kendricks) and David (Dae Kim) are on
a mission to Mars. All systems go until they discover a stowaway on board,
Adams (Anderson), and the delicate life support balance is threatened.
Never mind the glitches in the logic and the unanswered questions. The premise is interesting, the cast is good and it’s low-burn exciting.
3½ * of 5
