With the exception of The Predator, I love me some Shane Black. From the moment I first saw Lethal Weapon, I knew I had found a writer (and later a director) that I would enjoy following. Keeping in the vein of his other film, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Nice Guys plays with the detective…
Tag: private investigator
Lord of Illusions (1995) – Clive Barker
I remember discovering the writings of Clive Barker, and how his writing actually got under my skin, and freaked me out a bit. He definitely won a fan in me, and then the film, Hellraiser, wow! And while Nightbreed garnered itself a bit of a cult following, Lord of Illusions never seemed to, which bums…
F/X 2 (1991) – Richard Franklin
Five years after the first film, and a lifetime of difference for me, Roland Tyler (Bryan Brown) and Leo McCarthy (Brian Dennehy) were back in action. Unfortunately, an attempt to continue the gritty feeling special effects thriller comes across as a little disjointed, and honestly, more convoluted than it needed to be. An attempt to…
London After Midnight (1927) – Tod Browning
Tod Browning’s London After Midnight has been lost, burned in a fire that cleared out a percentage of the MGM vault in 1965. That doesn’t stop it from making it into John Landis’ brilliantly enjoyable Monsters in the Movies, available from DK Canada. A reconstructed version, created from film stills, and a script was released…
Murder, My Sweet (1944) – Edward Dmytryk
Dick Powell doesn’t quite have the narration patter down of a hard-boiled private investigator, especially not for the one he’s playing, Philip Marlowe, still, this is a great little film-noir bringing another incarnation of Raymond Chandler’s iconic character to the silver screen. And he handles the actual dialogue with his co-stars well, it’s just the…
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) – Robert Aldrich
Boy, can Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) pick ’em in this, the next film in DK Canada’s The Movie Book. Based on Mickey Spillane’s novel of the same name, the film sees the private investigator caught up in a corker of a mystery. I’ve always been interested in the character, I grew up with Stacy Keach…
Toronto After Dark 2017: Poor Agnes – Navin Ramaswaran
The second feature screening tonight at Scotiabank Theatre as part of the Toronto After Dark film festival is another new favourite. Poor Agnes, having its Toronto premiere this eve, is a disturbing drama that haunts and troubles even as its story captivates. Agnes (Lora Burke) is a serial killer, and she is a master at…
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1989) – Manhunt, and The Emissary
Captain’s log: stardate 42859.2 Between last week’s episode Up the Long Ladder, and the first episode this week, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier opened on 9 June, 1989. It was also the only Trek movie I never saw in the theatre. ten days later, on 19 June, (days after I graduated high school) Manhunt aired…
Sherlock Jr. (1924) – Buster Keaton
The Movie Book from DK Canada continues to provide laughs and entertainment as I take in another Buster Keaton film, Sherlock Jr. as I work through their What Else to Watch list following my screening of Steamboat Bill, Jr. Running at a brisk 45 minutes, this iconic film is everything you would expect from a…
Out of the Past (1947) – Jacques Tourneur
Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas bring the noir genre to roaring life on the big screen with this 1947 adaptation of the novel by Geoffrey Holmes. It’s also the first recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book following my screening of Point Blank. Mitchum is Jeff Bailey. He lives…
The Mind Reels 