Martin Campbell seems to be a hit or miss director, and you have to wonder if it’s his choice of projects. I love his work with the Bond franchise, and I quite enjoyed his take on Zorro. But I also remember how much I hated Vertical Limit and (of course) Green Lantern. Pairing him up…
Tag: gritty
Clerks (1994) – Kevin Smith
I remember when Clerks came to VHS. I was working at a video store and it resonated with everyone of us. It was like someone had taken our lives and put it on the screen. We as a crew identified so much with the film that we’d printed up labels with our names on it…
Deep Cover (1992) – Bill Duke
Bill Duke directs a gritty, rough and tumble cop film, and does it incredibly well. It’s an entertaining and brutal ride, and lets Laurence Fishburne shine. Fishburne plays Russell Stevens, a cop recruited by Carver (Charles Martin Smith) to go undercover as a drug dealer in order to get close to Barbosa (Gregory Sierra) and…
Red Sparrow (2018) – Francis Lawrence
Jennifer Lawrence trusts to Francis Lawrence, who directed her in the final three Hunger Games films. As such, she bares it all in this taut spy thriller. Based on the novel by Jason Matthews the story introduces us to Dominika Egorova (Lawrence). Her promising career as a ballerina is brought to a brutal end when…
Hamburger Hill (1987) – John Irvin
It’s been a while since I watched Hamburger Hill. In my teens, a lot of film and television were finally beginning to explore and talk about Vietnam and its effects on the servicemen who were in-country. I was reading books. I remember, vividly reading Robert Mason’s Chickenhawk, as well as the first time I saw…
Beat Street (1984) – Stan Lathan
I remember seeing the poster and soundtrack for Beat Street everywhere in the mid-80s, and I remember some of the songs popping up in my life. I didn’t recall much of the film itself, just the breakdancing and I figured maybe I should revisit it. It’s definitely worth the watch. There’s a grittiness to the…
Death Rides a Horse (1967) – Giulio Petroni
Lee Van Cleef stars alongside John Phillip Meceita in this spaghetti western from Giulio Petroni. My knowledge of spaghetti westerns is pretty slim, so it should come as no surprise that I had never heard of this one, but with Lee Van Cleef in it I figured why the hell not? What it is, is…
The Bone Collector (1999) – Phillip Noyce
Denzel Washington brings Jeffrey Deaver’s brilliant detective Lincoln Rhymes to life in Phillip Noyce’s big-screen version of The Bone Collector. Haunted by the moment he became a quadriplegic, Rhymes is an ex-homicide detective who is planning for his final transition, an assisted suicide, much against the wishes of his caregiver, Thelma (Queen Latifah). When one…
The Believers (1987) – John Schlesinger
The dirty and gritty New York of the 80s serves as the backdrop for this rough, brutal and frightening take on hoodoo and Santeria, with a script written by Mark Frost from a novel by Nicholas Conde, the story follows a police psychologist, Cal Jamison (Martin Sheen) when he gets called in a horrifying case….
King of New York (1990) – Abel Ferrara
Christopher Walken is completely captivating as Frank White, a recently paroled drug dealer who is using violence to get his way on the streets even as he tries to position himself as a possible political force in the city. Filled with now classic rap tunes, the film is gritty, violent and features a stellar cast…
The Mind Reels 